


I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead

by cyranonic



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Dark Academia, Eye Trauma, Gaslighting, Ghosts, Hallucinations, Horror, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Supernatural Elements, The Gothic (tm), Unreliable Narrator, a lot of internalized stigma against Mental Illness, cults and stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:35:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27027421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyranonic/pseuds/cyranonic
Summary: In his first year at an elite liberal arts college located in the rural wilderness, Dimitri spots a familiar face in the crowd. His step-sister, Edelgard, who knew him before the fire, before the voices, before the fight that cost him the trust of his closest friend. But after discovering records of a defunct campus secret society known as the Seven Sages, Dimitri begins to question whether some of the whispers that plague him might be real after all.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 48
Kudos: 82





	1. Chapter 1

A massive swarm of blackbirds had just erupted from the roof of the dormitories when Dimitri first noticed her. 

Her hair was different. That was his first impression, although her face was remarkably unchanged. He was surprised he had even recognized her, given that they were eleven years old the last time they had met. Nevertheless, as the blackbirds arose from the roof with a barking cacophony of noise, she turned, and he knew it had to be her. 

Edelgard. His step-sister. 

The campus of Garreg Mach was splendid in late summer. The new students were settled and now the rest of the campus was returning for the fall semester. The weather was pleasant for late summer, sunny but not so sweltering as it would be further south. Dark green ivy grew over the stone buildings and professors pried open the great wooden windows of their lecture halls to let in the breeze. 

Garreg Mach was an old campus, a former seminary dating back nearly two hundred years. Despite its reputation as one of the finest liberal arts colleges in the country, the student body was kept small, exclusive, and elite. The location was off the beaten path and the tuition was colossal, which meant that most of the students were the blacksheep sons and daughters of exceptionally wealthy families. 

Dimitri certainly fit the profile. Equally damning was the fact that there were already several familiar faces on campus. Sylvain Gautier had already taken it upon himself to offer a campus tour and Ingrid Galatea had spotted him moving into his dormitory and bashfully asked if she might borrow his car every now and then to visit the equestrian center. They all had attended the same boarding school for a few years, and it was a bit of a relief to know a few people already. And if Edelgard was attending as well…

“What are you staring at?” 

The flat voice of Felix came abruptly from behind Dimitri as he gazed into the crowd. Dimitri jumped slightly at the sound. 

This was the trouble with already knowing so many people within the first week of college. Some of them already knew him. 

“Nothing,” Dimitri said quickly. “Just bird.” 

“You’re going to be late,” Felix reminded him. “Ancient Lit is on the third floor of Knights Hall.” 

Felix had rolled the sleeves of his shirt to his elbow as his one concession to the heat. He wore stark black and white, while his long hair marked him as a bit unusual. Back at boarding school, Dimitri had spent a lot of time defending Felix from small cruelties, other boys calling him ‘fruitcake’ or ‘sissy’, until he eventually realized that Felix didn’t care at all what other people thought of him. Felix took pride in being unconventional, while Dimitri was in every way, very very conventional. 

“I’m on my way now,” Dimitri said. “Please, Felix, I can get to my own classes.” 

Felix simply narrowed his eyes. 

Things were difficult with Felix. They had always been inseparable. The problem was, they still were, although Dimitri was not sure if they were friends anymore. 

College was supposed to have freed him from his past. Dimitri had imagined himself at Garreg Mach a hundred times. It was where his father and his grandfather had both gone to school and he’d seen the campus a hundred times in his dreams. Dark wood and weathered stone. Cool green trees and hundreds of bright minds sitting in classrooms or reading on the quad. At college, Dimitri could have been just another student, eager to learn. 

But Felix seemed determined to remind him that he was Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, you know, from the tragedy. Dimitri had spent his whole life politely listening to condolences and then hearing those same people turn around and whisper about him. How had the house fire started? Why had Dimitri been the only survivor? And the step-mother, what about her? And Dimitri, was he, you know, quite right after? 

The trouble with Felix was that he knew him. Not like Sylvain and Ingrid knew him, as just an old friend. Felix _knew_ him. Felix had been there for the fight and now he knew all the ugly, twisted up parts of Dimitri and he dangled them over his head like the proverbial sword of Damocles. 

If Dimitri put a toe out of line, Felix would tell someone. If Dimitri couldn’t keep himself in check, Felix would tell everyone that Dimitri heard voices in his head that were not real. 

_break it open_

The whisper was so quiet, it was difficult to parse the words. Dimitri ducked his head as he started walking again towards his next class. 

The sunny afternoon around him seemed to have faded and the glory of the beautiful buildings and fine weather faded into a static, washed-out grey. Most of the whispers he heard were meaningless, nonsensical little phrases. They still terrified him. 

_pry up the boards_

When he arrived at his ancient literature seminar, he chose a bench near the back of the room. The windows were open and other students were already seated, opening their notebooks and selecting their pens. The afternoon sun made motes of dust light up in the air while the only sound was the quiet creaking of wood and the soft grind of chalk. 

Professor Hanneman was writing a long list of words on the chalkboard and Dimitri was unsure if he was supposed to write them down or already know what they meant. 

Thales. Pittacus. Bias. Solon. Cleobulus. Myson. Chilon. 

Hastily, Dimitri slid a notebook from his bag and began to write them down. As much as he tried to be careful, his penmanship was poor and his notes were often illegible to anyone else. It embarrassed him and so he wrapped an arm nonchalantly around the desk to shield his work. 

“Can virtue be taught?” Professor Hanneman began the class with a question. He waited just long enough to let them uncomfortably wonder if they were supposed to answer before he continued. “If it can, how best to teach it? Plato’s _Protagoras_ stages just such a debate” 

Professor Hanneman tapped the chalk board behind him. 

“Rhetoric is the art of the sophists,” he continued. “But according to Socrates, these fine gentlemen, often called the Seven Sages, managed to boil down all their wisdom into a few laconic phrases: ‘know thyself’ and ‘nothing too much.’ Is this virtue?” 

The class was silent again for another moment. Professor Hanneman smiled at them, the grey tips of his mustache twitching up. 

“According to Socrates, it is difficult to be good. And no one can be good all the time, not simply as a matter of circumstance, but because we cannot always know right from wrong,” Professor Hanneman said, his eyes scanning the classroom. “Thus, virtue is knowledge and knowledge is virtue. The simple advice of these so-called sages seems to pale in comparison to the philosophy of Socrates. If you all would turn your books to page two hundred and twenty…” 

When the lecture ended, Dimitri’s hand was cramping from all the notes he had taken. A pair of students behind him were muttering to each other as they packed up and he caught a few snatches of their conversation. 

“He had to have been referring to the crazy necromancy society, right?” a petite girl with bright red hair whispered to her friend. “Why else would he mention the Seven Sages so often? They barely matter in the reading.” 

“Oh, perhaps he was a member himself,” her friend whispered back. She was a pale, near colorless blonde with a pleasant face. “If he was, the Seven Sages were probably still sanctioned by the college in his day.” 

“Creepy to think that our professor could have been there almost thirty years ago,” the redhead shivered, although she was grinning. “Maybe he even knew the girl who disappeared?” 

Before Dimitri could overhear more, the two young women had left the room. 

Dimitri stood up and hurried to go before it looked like he was waiting to speak with the professor. He filed the term Seven Sages away for later. 

Idly, he wondered what classes Edelgard might be taking. He hoped he would bump into her again. Although they were essentially strangers to one another, the idea of having someone close to family here, alive, accessible, was too tempting to ignore. 

As he walked back towards his dormitory, the caws of the blackbirds echoed overhead. 

_drain her_

Dimitri shook his head to clear the voice away. He could ignore them. As long as he knew they weren’t real, he could still be normal. He could be a student, swim on the team, have friends like Sylvain and Ingrid, and keep Felix from telling anyone about the fight for a while longer. 

_the blood heals_

Dimitri rubbed the side of his head. He felt one of his migraines coming on. Without meaning to, he remembered the feeling of his fist colliding with Mat Gideon’s nose, the cracking sound, the sudden gush of red, the way he had dropped afterwards… 

Nearby, a group of students laughed. A boy was sitting on the grass, making a tiny braid in his hair and telling jokes. Dimitri refocused. He couldn’t let himself think like that anymore. He had to fix that part of him, the part that had started the fight. 

Virtue, after all, could be taught. But no one could be good all the time. 

  
\---  
  


A few weeks after the start of classes, the nervous energy of the other first years had begun to settle. Friend groups were forming up and parties were being eagerly planned for the weekends. Dimitri thought he was doing well in his classes, although he had yet to receive any marks back on his assignments.

He had always been strong academically. After all, he had a natural advantage in that he only slept a few hours a night and thus had plenty of time to complete work to the satisfaction of his instructors. 

Dimitri usually ate with Sylvain and Ingrid, familiarity drawing them back into one another’s orbits. Sylvain often brought friends to their table, meaning that he often brought upperclassmen girls. 

And of course, Felix always joined them. Dimitri wasn’t really sure why. Felix did not like him anymore. Felix was clearly making other friends, notably a tall ginger girl whose off-sized thrift store clothes marked her as one of the few applicants who must have received a generous scholarship to attend. But for some unknown reason, Felix sat at their table every night for dinner. 

One evening, there was a violent summer storm raging outside. Students ran into the dining hall soaked and windswept and thunder occasionally shakes the high windows that line the long room. 

“Well, I guess we aren’t riding tomorrow,” Ingrid said wistfully, staring out at the rain. “All of the fields are going to turn to mud.” 

She and Sylvain had both joined the equestrian club, Sylvain with his own horse and Ingrid leasing a mare sent out to train. They had invited Dimitri to join them a number of times, but he hadn’t yet gone. He enjoyed working with the horses, knew it would make him feel better to see the sunshine more often, but… but he didn’t quite trust himself. Riding required control. 

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t knock the power out,” Sylvain said. “Last year when a big storm blew through, the whole campus was blacked out for a week. Too rural, I guess.” 

“I think I might visit the library tonight,” Dimitri announced, not wanting to think about the possibility of spending a long night awake in his dorm room without power. “If anyone would care to join.” 

“What for?” Ingrid asked. “I thought you just turned in your first papers last week?”

“Just an independent research project,” Dimitri said. “And I rather like the library.”

“Me too,” Sylvian smirked. “Did you know that in special collections they have these woodblock prints where all the ladies are totally--” 

“Sylvain!” 

“What research?” Felix asked as Ingrid was distracted with whacking Sylvain with her spoon. He didn’t ask it with friendly interest. 

“I overheard some girls talking about the Seven Sages,” Dimitri admitted. “I’d like to know the history. My father never mentioned such an organization on campus.” 

“Stupid fraternity bullshit,” Felix pronounced. “It was just some old club playing dress-up in the woods and claiming they could raise the dead until they got banned for violating student conduct rules.” 

“Well, it sounded interesting,” Dimitri replied mildly. 

“Well, it isn’t,” Felix snapped tightly back. 

Ingrid and Sylvain had stopped squabbling, seeming to notice the tension. 

Why are we doing this, Dimitri wondered. Why did Felix still bother to pretend that everything was fine and that nothing had changed between them? Why hadn’t Felix chosen another of the many schools he certainly could have afforded? If he thought Dimitri was too dangerous to be left alone, why hadn’t he just called the police on him that night and left it at that? 

Another clap of thunder echoed through the dining hall and Dimitri remembered how his ears had rung for hours after the fight, how his knuckles had hurt, how he hadn’t realized until morning that he had cut his fist open on Mat Gideon’s teeth…

_crack in the wall_

“What is going on with you two?” Ingrid asked into the uncomfortable silence. 

Dimitri glanced at Felix. His breath caught a bit in his throat. Felix could tell her right now and then… then… 

“Nothing,” Felix said dully. “Just don’t have much tolerance for elite secret societies who hide their nepotism behind Latin chanting and bogus rituals. Study something of value.” 

“Ever the non-conformist,” Sylvain quipped. “Watch out Felix, you might miss out on the family yacht club invite.” 

“Leave him alone, Sylvain,” Dimitri said. “He’s right.” 

Felix stared at him with barely concealed loathing before he picked up his food and left without another word. 

“I just don’t understand,” Ingrid sighed. “Felix used to be prickly, but now he’s downright hostile.” 

“People change, I guess,” Sylvain said with a shrug. 

Dimitri shook his head without saying why. 

He wished Dedue was here. Dimitri had been writing him letters, but it wasn’t the same. If he was just a few years older, he could have used the trust to pay Dedue’s tuition as well. But such a thought felt patronizing, the oblivious rich kid manipulating his friend. Nevertheless, he wished Dedue were with him. 

After dinner, the rain was still pouring and the wind blew it nearly horizontally. Dimitri battled his way across the quad and when he arrived at the library, his shirt was soaked and his hair dripped onto his face. He cast an apologetic look at the librarian who silently gestured towards the bathroom before he could sit at one of the long wooden tables with a book. 

Dimitri did his best to dry the rainwater from his hair and shoulders with a few paper towels. He glanced up at himself in the mirror as he did. He’d always found his own reflection slightly disconcerting. His face never seemed… symmetrical somehow.

He drew his lips into a smile a few times as practice. It looked chilling. As much as he tried to keep his hair neatly cropped, the rain made it stick to his face like some wild madman. 

When he emerged, he went first for the college’s archives. There were old yearbooks, the student newspaper, and hundreds of sketches and photos taken of the grounds, the students, and even the undeveloped land itself back when the Church of Seiros had first founded a seminary up in these wild hills. 

He scanned through an index for any mention of the Seven Sages. The regular card catalogue had given him mostly translations of the classics: Plato and Plutarch and Diogenes Laërtius. In the college’s own archives, however, he found a number of articles from the student newspaper dating back approximately thirty years. 

As Felix had said, it seemed like any other collegiate secret society. It had exclusive, not particularly secret, and appeared designed to be a place for the hyper-wealthy to reward one another further with a few occult-flavored twists thrown in for the macabre delight of bored eighteen year old boys. It had carried the dubious affiliation of an academic honors society and social club.

There were a few photos of their members, smirking young men outside of a large building he did not recognize, captured in a moment of repose in blurry black and white. 

But thirty years ago, something had occurred. The student newspaper was oddly vague about the whole incident, reporting only that the academic society had been disbanded after violations of the student code of conduct. The other headline, of course, concerned a young woman who had been reported missing after a party. 

It was easy to make the connection that surely other students had been making for generations. Perhaps it had been something so depressingly common as a hazing ritual gone wrong. Or perhaps it had simply been an unfortunate mistake by a young woman unused to the club’s heavy drinking and wooded location. 

He was preparing to leave the matter alone, to find something else to read that wouldn’t excite his darker interests, when he found another sheaf of papers at the back of the drawer. It appeared to be a rather blurrily done photocopy of a handwritten book. ‘Bylaws of the Seven Sages’ the cover promised in an elegant calligraphy hand.

Dimitri took it back to his table to peruse the pages. He adjusted the lamp so that he could attempt to make out the badly copied words. For a moment, he thought his mind might be playing another trick on him, but then he realized that the manuscript seemed to be mostly written in what he recognized as Greek. He flipped through a few pages, mainly paying attention to the drawings. 

The writer had included several diagrams of what looked like arcane sigils and circles. There was something that appeared to be a hastily sketched topographic map with lines drawn seemingly at random across it. On one page, there appeared to be a schematic of some sort of chemical device. On another, there was a massive, anatomical drawing of a human eye.

“Do you read much Greek?” 

The voice fractured through his focus with such force, he worried as his head jerked up that it might have been another hallucination. But no, as he raised his head from the text, he saw a person, a real solid person who cast a shadow over his table where she stood. He tried to relax without letting his hands shake. 

In another moment, though, he recognized who it was. Edelgard.

It was Edelgard leaning over his table and squinting at his upside down book. She wore a dark red dress and a black jacket, which only served to emphasize her oddly lightened hair, but unlike him, she was not soggy with rain. Even as a child, she had always been meticulously neat. 

“I’m sorry, did I startle you?” Edelgard said. She was looking at him with polite interest, but not with recognition. He had probably changed far more than she did since the last time that they met. When she’d stayed with them for the summer, that was before the fire, before his parents had died.

“Oh no, I apologize,” Dimitri immediately fumbled to say. “The storm has me on edge, that’s all. Ah, Dimitri. Sorry, I’m Dimitri.” 

“Edelgard,” she replied in turn. There was still no recognition in her eyes. His name wasn’t uncommon, but it seemed unlikely she wouldn’t make the connection. “I don’t mean to pry, I’m just interested in your book.” 

“Unfortunately, I have no idea what it says,” Dimitri admitted. “I’m as adept a linguist as I am a dancer.” 

Edelgard quirked her head to the side. Her face was utterly blank. Dimitri faltered.

It had to be her, right? Her name was so uncommon, it couldn’t be a coincidence. She was his step-sister. The only family he had left. She’d spent a summer at the house before it had burned, visiting her mother, _their_ mother. They had played together and she had taught him to dance. They had been friends. 

He couldn’t have just… imagined that? He felt his face flushing hot. 

“I have a bit of a knack for languages. That word there, for example, that’s ‘hegemon,’” Edelgard said smoothly, pointing to the top of the page and not remarking upon his awkwardness. “Is this for a class?” 

“No, it’s actually--” Dimitri began, then he laughed uncomfortably. Why not just tell her everything? She probably already thought he was bizarre. “I was interested in the Seven Sages. My father was an alumnus, but he never mentioned anything about a defunct secret society.” 

Edelgard smiled slightly at that. He felt relieved. 

“Magic and mystery, hm?” she asked. “You play somewhat against type.” 

“I--” Dimitri began, but he understood what she meant. He always came across as somewhat boring to people before they knew his name and story. “I suppose I do.” 

“Well, perhaps you’ll finally crack the case,” Edelgard said warmly. “Or maybe you’ll find an entertaining séance to scare your fellow students. Either way, you’ll have to work on your Greek.” 

“If you can spare the time,” Dimitri offered, “I’d appreciate your help.”

Edelgard tilted her head to the side. She had always been so stoic. She had little toleration for his emotions, even as a child. 

“Certainly,” she said. “If you trust me to get it right.” 

As she said it, there was an enormous crack of lighting. It sounded close enough to have hit the roof. The lights immediately flickered into pitch blackness. 

Involuntarily, Dimitri felt himself stagger to his feet. He heard his chair clatter against the ground behind him. He couldn’t see a thing. His leg collided hard with the side of the table.

It was all just black. Black as smoke. His lungs began to strain for air. He was surrounded by smoke, he couldn’t see, he was going to choke, he was… 

_pull the bucket_

“Alright, alright,” the librarian’s voice cut through his panic. “Everyone to the exit. The library is closed until the power is restored. Leave your books on the front desk.” 

Dimitri managed to get a breath of air and immediately felt a horrific shame wash over him. It was only a storm and he was shaking with fear like a child. He was going to crack up again. He had to do better. 

What would Edelgard think to see him quivering like a feral dog over a simple power flicker? 

But in the darkness, she had vanished. 

Dimitri grabbed the photocopy of the bylaws and tucked it under his arm as he blindly felt his way through the shelves towards the exit. Once he reached the hall, there was at least a bit of a glow from the still flickering lightning outside. But in the dark, he never spotted Edelgard. She must have already returned to her room. 

It was only once Dimitri had run through the still steady rain back to his own dormitory that he realized the book was still tucked firmly beneath his arm. He laid it on his desk guiltily. He would return it tomorrow. Hopefully it hadn’t gotten too wet. 

His room was as black as the library. Out in the hall he heard other students laughing, feet running up and down as they ran to each other’s rooms. It was just a power outage. A gleefully mandatory break from study. Dimitri couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. 

Finally, he forced himself to go out into the hall towards the dorm lavatory. He splashed water onto his face in the darkness and brushed his teeth with trembling fingers. 

In the darkness, he only saw the dim outline of himself in the mirror. Part of the white of his eye gleamed a bit as lightning flickered outside of the windows again.

His smile still didn’t look right on that side. 

But no. No. He hadn’t been smiling that time. At least, he hadn’t meant to smile. 

Dimitri spit out the toothpaste and rinsed his mouth with his eyes squeezed tightly shut. None of this was real, he reminded himself. As long as he knew that, it couldn’t hurt him. As long as he was just mad, he could keep himself under control. 

When he got back to his room, there was a dim glow outside of his door. It was Felix. 

“Here,” Felix said grimly. “Candle.” 

He held out an already lit candle in a glass cup. Dimitri squinted at the light and rubbed his eye. 

“Thank you,” he mumbled, taking the candle and trying to bundle himself back into his room quickly.

“What’s wrong with you?” Felix asked suspiciously, stepping into the room after him. Dimitri set the candle on his desk, keeping his eyes fixed on the light to steady himself. “You’re acting odd.” 

“I’m fine,” Dimitri said stiffly. “You can leave me be.” 

“You’re lying,” Felix frowned. In the partial light of the candle, his face was a study in sharp lines and severe angles. It made him into a charcoal sketch, not unlike the ghoulish creature Dimitri saw in his own mirrored face. 

“Felix, please,” Dimitri muttered. “Just go. I’m tired.” 

“No,” Felix said. He closed the door behind him and faced Dimitri defiantly.

“You just--” Dimitri began. He felt frustration building in him. It hadn’t been a good night and his nerves were already frayed. He couldn’t handle this as well. Being with Felix hurt now. “Why are you here? If you hate me so much now, why are you even here?”

“Someone has to be,” Felix replied darkly. “You refuse to take care of yourself properly. You lie to everyone. You stopped seeing the doctor your uncle still pays for. I saw you… I saw you that night, Dimitri. You’re not safe to be left alone.” 

“Then tell someone,” Dimitri insisted, although he felt like Felix had struck him. Felix thought he was dangerous. Felix was afraid of him. “If you really think I’m dangerous. Call the police. Call Mat Gideon’s parents. Call my uncle. Tell them I’m crazy. Tell them you heard me talking to the air and I’m crazy and I terrify you. Just don’t make me wait like this anymore, Felix. Don’t pretend we’re still friends.”

“What do you think this is about?” Felix asked, his voice suddenly angry as well. “You think I’d be afraid of you just for some voices in your head?” 

“I know what it’s about!” Dimitri replied, running his hands through his hair a few times. “It’s about the fight. But, Felix, you knew Gideon! All those comments about my family, about Dedue, about you? You know why I did it.” 

“Do you?” Felix asked sharply. “Do you know why you beat a man to death?” 

“He was…” Dimitri’s voice faltered. “I didn’t kill him. It was a car accident. He should have called someone if he couldn’t drive… I didn’t…”

“He was dead, Dimitri,” Felix hissed. “I saw him die. I saw you kill him. And yes he was a hateful, bigoted piece of shit, but you snapped his neck. And then… then you…” 

Felix’s breath caught. Felix, who had never been afraid of anything in his life, was afraid of Dimitri. 

And then Felix’s eyes flicked down to the book on Dimitri’s desk, half-illuminated by the guttering candle. 

“What the hell is that?” he demanded. 

“Just,” Dimitri grabbed it hastily. “Library book. For Ancient Lit.” 

Felix set his jaw. He held up a finger and spoke deliberately and slowly, with barely repressed fury in his voice. 

“Dimitri, you need to stop. You need to leave this occult shit behind, now. Don’t do this or else I will… I will do what I have to. Even if that means calling your uncle and telling him whatever I must to get you the hell out of here.” 

Some fierce cold anger welled up in Dimitri’s heart. What right did Felix have to say those words to him when he knew nothing, when he could never understand? He felt that red haze begin to tint his vision, felt his hands twitch into fists. 

_off the road_

The anger faded as quickly as it had appeared. This was Felix. He had always been the closest thing Dimitri had to home.

After the fire, there was still Felix. After Glenn, there was still Felix. All those years of boarding school and those lonely summers with his uncle, there was always Felix. They were each other’s comfort, each other’s grimly understanding partner in grief. If there was one place in the world he had ever felt totally safe, it was at Felix’s side. 

Until he’d destroyed that in one horrible night of anger he couldn’t take back. 

And if Felix hated him and feared him right now, then he had every right. 

Dimitri felt his shoulders sag. His head was pounding. 

The way Felix was looking at him right now was horrible. He was so tense. His muscles were tightened to run, maybe even to fight. And his face was stricken, those light brown eyes wider than usual and his dark hair falling out from its bindings and curling a bit around his ears. 

Dimitri lowered his head to his chest.

“I’ll take the book back tomorrow,” he said. His voice sounded small and strained. “I’m sorry.” 

Felix looked at him, still coiled tight as a spring. But eventually he nodded, frown deepening into a scowl. 

“Alright,” he said simply. Then he glanced at the candle. “Keep it lit.” 

He slammed the door as he left. 

Dimitri left the candle burning until around four in the morning when the power suddenly returned. The rain had become a dull patter and the winds no longer whistled through the stones. Dimitri slept a few hours until dawn. 

When he awoke, he was still exhausted. It wasn’t really his fault then, if it slipped his mind to return the book? 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy halloween season! title is from Sylvia Plath "Mad Girl's Love Song"


	2. Chapter 2

Autumn arrived at Garreg Mach’s campus with bitter cold mornings and a constant whipping wind. The trees had a few weeks of glorious color before the winds ripped the leaves away. The branches grew bare and sharp looking. 

Returning from the pool each morning became agonizing as Dimitri’s hair never quite dried by the time he had to run across campus to his classes. He threw on thickly knitted sweaters to try to keep the chill out of his bones, but he often ended his seminars shivering after an hour of sitting still. 

Ingrid returned his car keys at lunch one day with cheeks flushed bright red from the cold. 

“How is the mare coming along?” Dimitri asked as she began slurping down a bowl of soup. He was eating quickly as well, hoping to finish his food by the time Felix’s linear equations class let out to avoid another awkward encounter. 

“She’s feisty,” Ingrid said between bites. “This weather keeps spooking her. She tries to buck me off every time we get another gust. Are you going to the party this weekend?”

“There’s a party?” Dimitri asked. He’d been spending most of his free hours either in the pool, at the library, or in his room. A few years earlier, he might have befriended some of his teammates, joined a few clubs, or at least strolled the grounds. Now that seemed too risky. 

“My friend Dorothea is throwing one in the west building,” Ingrid said brightly. “You should come! Sylvain will be there, naturally, and some of his friends are actually shockingly alright. Have you met Hilda?”

“I don’t know,” Dimitri said uncertainly. “I’d hate to crash.”

“It’s more of an everyone’s invited sort of party,” Ingrid said with a quirk of her eyebrow. “Or as many people as they can fit into the common room. Seriously Dimitri, you should come out at least once this semester. You can’t work all the time.” 

“Alright,” he said. “I suppose it might be fun.” 

He glanced up as he heard another group of students enter the dining hall. It was a quarter past the hour. Classes must have just gotten out. 

“I don’t mean to abandon you,” Dimitri said, standing. “But I was planning to duck in on a professor’s office hours and I have to run.” 

It wasn’t entirely a lie. He was actually hoping to catch Profesor Hanneman before his next class. 

In between his papers and his projects, Dimitri had been quietly working his way through the 'Bylaws of the Seven Sages', armed only with a dictionary and an introductory textbook to ancient Greek. His translations were something like if you took all of the words in a sentence and tossed them randomly together, but he got the gist of some of the material. 

Some of it was exactly what he had expected. Pompous rules about the candidates who were allowed to be admitted (“academically gifted, of good family and reputation, no deviants or degenerates, and of rational and pragmatic character”), obscure rules about initiation (“new members must provide a vial of blood and recite a pledge of loyalty to Agartha below and to Thinis arisen”), and a hierarchy of members (apparently a council of seven senior members who each took on the alias of one of the sages). 

But there were other parts of the book that gave him pause. And he couldn’t trust himself anymore, which was why he needed Professor Hanneman to check his work. After all, he hadn’t managed to spot Edelgard again and she seemed to have no interest in seeking him out either.

He tried not to dwell on that fact too much. Sill, it was a small campus and her new hair was so striking. It seemed certain that he would run into her again.

Professor Hanneman was in his office when Dimitri hesitantly knocked at the door. 

“Ah, Mr. Blaiddyd,” he said, looking up from a stack of papers he must be in the midst of grading. “Is there something I can help you with?” 

“I was actually curious to see if you might help me with an independent project,” Dimitri said as he stepped into the office. “I’m trying to practice my Greek with a project for the library, sort of a local history project. I was wondering if you might help me with a difficult passage. The dictionary has not been very illuminating with many of these words.”

“You’re learning Greek?” Professor Hanneman said with some surprise. “Impressive, although for a local history project, a little unusual. Well, I can’t promise to be an expert linguist, but I will see what I can do.” 

Dimitri produced the page where he had carefully copied both the original letters and his own translation, written painstakingly in his most carefully handwriting. Professor Hanneman glanced over it and then he pulled out a monocle from his pocket and gazed closer at some of the letters. 

“Well, this is certainly an odd text,” he said after a moment. “From what I can tell, your translation is literally correct, although there are some subtle differences between the terms _nekyia_ and _katabasis_.” 

“It refers to a journey to the underworld, correct?” Dimitri asked.

“The _katabasis_ is a journey to the underworld, physically. The _nekyia_ might better be described as a rite used to speak to the dead,” Professor Hanneman. “As for the rest of the work, well, let’s just say the writer has some curious ideas about how that might be accomplished.” 

“So the ram’s blood is...?”

“Literal. Yes.” Professor Hanneman scanned the manuscript again. “I must say, I am impressed with your work. May I ask what the scope of the larger project is?” 

“Oh,” Dimitri paused. “Well, this is actually a part of a translation of the bylaws for an old student organization.” 

“Ah, I see, so you are interested in the Seven Sages,” Professor Hanneman laughed dryly. “They are an odd little part of the college's history, aren’t they?” 

“Professor, forgive me if this is not my place, but do you happen to know anymore about why they were banned from campus?” Dimitri asked. “Violating the rules of student conduct is a bit of a broad charge and just given the unusual nature of some of this text…”

“As far as I know, there was no human sacrifice,” Professor Hanneman replied, seeming to guess his thoughts. “I know there are many rumors concerning a young woman who went missing around that time, but given that no one has ever discovered a body on campus in these last thirty years, I doubt there was any evidence to suggest a murder.”

“Of course,” Dimitri nodded, feeling a bit embarrassed to seem like he was so morbid. “I just… you know, for the library I thought it might be interesting to do a translation. Perhaps interview a former member, I don’t know.” 

“Well, good luck finding one,” Professor Hanneman said. “There is a reason these groups tended to keep their membership secret. Nepotism tends to work best when it’s subtle. Happy translating, Mr. Blaiddyd. Perhaps I’ll see you in my language seminar next semester.” 

_wandered in the snow._

The tiny little whisper sounded so real, he had to resist the urge to glance over his shoulder. Quickly, he collected his bag and looked down at his watch. 

“Oh,” Dimitri said. “Perhaps.” 

He hurried to leave before Professor Hanneman could try to ask him about his intended major.

That weekend, Sylvain and Ingrid both came to his room before the party, as though they expected that he wouldn’t come unless they marched him down there by force. He had actually intended to go. He’d gotten dressed and ready and then he’d started reading and the time had slipped his mind. 

“You’re wearing that?” Sylvain asked skeptically when Dimitri answered their knock. 

“What’s wrong with this?” Dimitri asked, unnerved. He still had some trouble with looking in the mirror and he feared he was walking around every day with his hair a mess and his clothes askew. It was something about his face he just… he didn’t like to look at it right now. 

“Here,” Sylvain said, unbuttoning the top button of his shirt. “And… here.” 

He tousled a hand through Dimitri’s hair before anyone could stop him. Ingrid couldn’t hold back a giggle although she still gave Sylvain a whack on the arm. She was wearing a plaid skirt and a turtleneck sweater, just a hint more casual than her usual clothes, while Sylvain was dressed in a pair of dark green trousers offset with a loose shirt the color of rust that hung off of his lanky frame.

So perhaps Dimitri had a tendency to look a little overly formal. 

As Dimitri locked his door behind him, he heard another door from the hall swing open and Felix stepped out. 

“Oh, hey Felix,” Sylvain said, “you coming to the party, or--?” 

“I’m coming with you,” he said darkly, as though the prospect was a long test of his endurance. 

“I think you’ll all really like Dorothea, she’s so nice,” Ingrid said as Felix fell into step with them. “She really went out of her way to help me in my first few weeks here.” 

“Hey, I’ve been a solid mentor too,” Sylvain objected. “Why don’t I get called nice?” 

“Because you’re not nice about it,” Ingrid sniped back. 

Dimitri smiled a little. They made quite the pair. 

Beside him, Felix made a quiet sound of exasperation. Dimitri’s smile fell. Perhaps his face was doing that thing again. He never looked quite right when he smiled. Better not to do it in front of anyone. 

When they arrived at the west dormitory, Dimitri heard music thudding through the windows of the common room. They hurried inside to find a mostly packed room of primarily upperclassmen. People poured wine into plastic cups and someone was choosing the next record to play and a few people were dancing in the center of the room that had been cleared of chairs. 

A young woman with dark brown hair immediately waved to Ingrid and embraced her. 

“And who are these two?” she asked after yanking her hand back from Sylvain who had been attempting to kiss her fingers. 

“Dimitri and Felix,” Ingrid introduced them. “We all went to boarding school together.” 

Dorothea rolled her eyes but smiled. 

“Ah wonderful, more fancy prep school types,” she said, but then winked. “Will you huddle in a corner together and analyze my taste in music, or are you here to dance and have actual fun?” 

“Um,” Dimitri began. “I suppose to have fun, but I may embarrass myself if I try to dance.” 

Dorothea laughed musically.

“And you?” she asked Felix who stood silently beside him with his arms folded over his chest. 

“Don’t dance,” he said shortly. “And I’m not fun.” 

Dorothea raised an eyebrow. Dimitri braced himself for Felix to say something else rude that would upset her, but she actually seemed amused by him. 

“Ingrid, you have such interesting friends,” was all she said in the end, but her eyes followed Felix as she spoke.

Dimitri had an odd moment where he felt briefly defensive of Felix. People seldom understood him and Dimitri had always taken the responsibility before to make sure that no one ever teased him. But something about the way that Dorothea watched him as she uncorked another bottle of wine gave him pause. Perhaps her teasing was of a somewhat different nature. 

The first hour of the party was a blur of introductions. Dimitri was taken around the room to meet face after face, repeat his own name again and again. The music was too loud for easy conversation so he mostly just made introductions and then smiled politely from behind his plastic cup. He hoped he looked alright. He hoped he didn’t have that hollow eyed look that would upset or menace anyone else. 

After that, the wine started to make him feel warm and a bit more relaxed. The music was good, although he wasn’t familiar with most of the songs. Ingrid and Sylvain tried to dance while Dimitri and Felix stood by the window, Felix holding a mostly full cup still and speaking in monosyllables to Dorothea. 

A girl with dark red hair had a bit too much to drink and spilled her cup all over the dance floor. There was a brief respite from the chaos as Sylvain helped to mop it up. 

“Sorry, I think Monica may need some help finding her keys and heading out,” Dorothea said as she excused herself to help. “Be right back.” 

Felix nodded and continued to stare down at his mostly untouched drink. 

“Is this alright?” Dimitri asked him, offering yet another tentative olive branch. “Would you like to leave?”

“I’m fine,” Felix said shortly. “Just try not to drink too much.” 

“It was only one cup, Felix,” Dimitri murmured, feeling the sting of his tone keenly. “I’m not going to-- I’m feeling well. You don’t have to follow me around if you aren’t having fun, I’m in control.” 

“Are you certain?” Felix asked cooly. 

Dimitri clenched his plastic cup until it cracked. 

As groups and dance partners reformed after the spill was mopped up, Dimitri caught a glimpse of pale hair through the crowd. That had to be her.

“I’ll be back,” he said to Felix, trying not to let his anger show. If he did, then Felix would follow him and Dimitri did not want Felix around for this. 

He set his crushed cup down on a low table and quietly shouldered his way through the mass of bodies to find her. For a moment, he thought she must have slipped away, but then he felt a draft from the door and saw it about to swing shut. Impulsively, he followed. 

When he stepped outside, the air was freezing. The sounds of the party were muted enough that he could finally hear. He glanced around and then spotted her. She was standing by a bench outside of the dorm, fumbling in the pockets of a long wine-colored coat. 

“Hello again,” he said, hoping his voice wasn’t too loud after a few hours of shouting over music. She started a little at the sound. 

“Ah, you’ve caught me in the act,” Edelgard said. Dimitrti’s brow furrowed in confusion until he saw that she was holding a cigarette between her fingers. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, if you’d like some privacy…” Dimitri stammered.

“It’s alright,” Edelgard said, holding the cigarette between her lips and sheltering the lighter from the wind with her hands. “Just don’t tell anyone. I’m only human, you know?” 

“Okay,” Dimitri said. He stood cautiously beside her, his hands in his pockets. It was quite cold. 

“So, Dimitri, right?” Edelgard said after a moment. “How’s your library book?” 

“My Greek is improving,” he said. She nodded with the hint of a smile.

“You find out how to summon the devil or speak to ghosts?” she asked, her tone light. Nevertheless, he felt himself shiver. The wind, he thought firmly. The wind was very cold. 

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said. 

_disappear and replace._

The nonsensical whisper served to make an immediate hypocrite of him. It wasn’t real, he reminded himself. It was his brain that was broken, that’s all. 

“I do,” Edelgard said, surprising him. “Another little weakness, I suppose.” 

She flicked a bit of ash from the cigarette.

“Have you ever seen a ghost?” Dimitri asked, wishing they could talk of something else. 

“My brothers,” Edelgard said, “And sisters.” 

“I’m so sorry,” Dimitri replies, struck momentarily dumb by the implication of her words. He recalled his father telling him that Edelgard had other half-siblings by her father, but he hadn’t heard that any had died. 

“It was a long time ago,” Edelgard continued. “And I’ve heard they went very peacefully. Carbon monoxide.” 

“I--” Dimitri began. How she didn’t remember him was one question, but her having never heard of the Blaiddyd fire? That seemed impossible. Although perhaps if she had lost siblings in such a similar manner, her grief might have affected her memory. “I lost my parents to a house fire. Five years ago.”

Edelgard looked at him. Her face was expressionless. Then she quirked the edge of her mouth into a hard, bitter smile. 

“Guess that’s why we’re standing outside of this party,” she said. “Not quite having fun.” 

Warmth bloomed in his chest. For the first time since the fight with Gideon, he didn’t feel like such a monster. She was his family and they were, horribly, tragically, the same. But that meant he wasn’t alone. Edelgard understood some of the terrible things about him. 

“I suppose that is the case,” Dimitri agreed. “Do you want to go back inside and try?” 

“No, thank you,” Edelgard sighed. “My friend has already embarrassed herself and I should go check on her. Make sure she’s back in her room.” 

“Oh, of course,” Dimitri said, recalling the girl with dark red hair who had fallen with her drink. “Another night then, maybe.” 

“Another night,” Edelgard agreed. “Let me know if you find any more ancient Greek séances. I’d like to check in on my ghosts.”

She stubbed out her cigarette and waved before walking into the chilly night. Dimitri watched her go until she was hidden by the darkness. 

The next morning, he awoke to the news that a girl called Monica was missing. Apparently she’d been drunk, had last been seen heading back towards her dorm room, and then suddenly, inexplicably, she had vanished. 

The rumor was that she’d been dumped by her boyfriend. She hadn’t been taking it well and her grades had been slipping. People said that she’d just taken a bus back home after the party and was too embarrassed to say anything. There was no official word from the college on the matter, so no one was seriously worried. She would either return next semester after a medical leave or transfer to another college and start fresh. 

As soon as Dimitri heard the news he felt his adrenaline spike. His right eyelid had been giving him tremors lately, an old problem that often accompanied his lack of sleep. He rubbed it a few times to get the irritating twitching to stop. 

It was normal, he told himself firmly. People dropped out of college sometimes.

But what if it wasn’t? What if it was exactly the same as the girl thirty years ago? 

He threw his grey woolen coat on over his sweater and wrapped a scarf around his neck as he walked to his classes, keeping his gaze lowered to the ground. There were wet leaves sticking on the pavement and the grey stone of the academic buildings looked dreary against a similarly colored sky. He received good marks back on an essay, but one of the comments was that he had a tendency to overstate his point without evidence. It felt crushing, despite the overall grade. 

He wrote another letter to Dedue, still at home and working in his family restaurant when he ought to be here. When he wrote to Dedue, Dimitri didn’t have to leave things out. Dedue was the only person he could talk to about some parts of his life, particularly the part where he heard things that weren’t real and knew it. 

He ought to call, but the idea of calling Dedue for help while he was working and Dimitri was here seemed so imbalanced, he couldn’t even imagine it. Dedue had gotten into every college he’d applied to, but he had deferred them all until he could earn enough money to cover his living expenses for a year. In a letter, at least Dedue could respond at his leisure. He didn’t want to call up the Molinaro restaurant and catch Dedue in between waiting tables and prepping vegetables like he was just some hired servant. 

In a week there was still no word about Monica. Dimitri had to carefully restrain himself from asking too much about it.

He didn’t know any of her friends and if he questioned Ingrid or Sylvain too much they would probably mention it to Felix, and if Felix found out he might… he might… 

Which was why he found himself flipping again and again through the Bylaws of the Seven Sages, certain that the answer lay within his garbled Greek translations. As Professor Hanneman had said, there was no clear evidence of any nefarious wrong-doing. No page labeled ‘instructions for human sacrifice’ or ‘how to capture your fellow students for blood rituals.’ But Dimitri could not shake the feeling. It was like a itch, constant in the back of his mind. It was just like the girl thirty years ago. There had to be a connection. 

“To summon a spirit” one page read “a nekyia.” It was what Edelgard had suggested, after all. Some occult séance to speak with the dead. It was the absurd stuff of children trying to frighten one another, not real. But Edelgard had told him she believed in ghosts. And if she believed in ghosts, then perhaps it wasn’t so crazy for him to allow the possibility. 

There were, he thought in one of his weaker moments, a lot of people he would like the chance to speak with again. 

But Monica was the issue at hand. If spirits were real and ghosts could speak to the living, surely there was some spirit on campus who knew if the Seven Sages had actually taken the girl thirty years ago. And the ritual seemed so oddly simple when laid out as a set of directions on a photocopied page of printer paper. 

It was simple, but for one unusual item. And so Dimitri found himself one weekend wrapping his coat tightly around his body to keep the wind out and walking into town to visit a butcher shop.

He could have driven, but the thought of a long stroll down the bike path and into the quaint little downtown sounded peaceful. The wind was cold, but he didn’t mind. It made him feel clear and focused. No little voices spoke their strange and eerily meaningless words to him out in the woods. 

He got a few odd looks at the butcher shop. It might have simply been that most people did not order ram’s blood, although Dimitri had thrown in a request for a few other cuts of meat so that his order wouldn’t be quite so remarkable. It also might have been that he was clearly a student and students generally did not come into the little town to buy local meats when they had the dining hall to provide their meals. 

Dimitri knew how he looked to them. Big and blonde and with clothes more expensive than he knew what to do with sometimes. He was everything his uncle had wanted for him on the surface. It only made what he knew was lurking inside of him more horrible. 

He paid quickly in cash and then left the butcher shop as fast as his legs would carry him. He tucked his mouth down into the wool of his scarf, letting the wind toss his mop of hair around and into his eyes. His hand was clenched around the plastic bag of meat and blood which suddenly seemed so macabre now. Had they thought he was pulling some prank? Some cruel joke on another classmate maybe? 

“What are you doing here?” 

Felix’s voice made him start so badly he nearly dropped the bag and let the plastic tub of blood spill out onto the sidewalk. Dimitri spun around to see Felix crossing the street. He was bundled up as well in a long coat that made him look like an elegant slender shadow. 

“Felix,” Dimitri managed to say with a strained smile. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were here. I’m just heading back to campus.” 

“You didn’t drive?” Felix asked skeptically. The wind tossed strands of his hair down from where he’d pulled it back. 

“No, I wanted the walk,” Dimitri said. 

“You walked into town to buy… lamb chops?” Felix asked, his eyes still narrow. 

“Ingrid wanted to try the grill outside of the dormitory,” Dimitri said. The lie came so easily. He felt disgusted. “I thought I should go somewhere local.” 

“You walked forty minutes to town for meats to grill outside in this weather?” Felix asked suspiciously. 

“Yes,” Dimitri said lamely. “What are you doing in town?” 

Felix unexpectedly pressed his lips together and looked down. 

“I went to a store,” he said evasively. 

“Not to buy anything?” Dimitri asked, mystified as to how he had suddenly gotten Felix to become the guilty one who was clearly lying. 

“I went to the antique store,” Felix said, “just to look.” 

“You walked forty minutes into town to… look at antiques?” Dimitri asked. It was his turn now to poke holes in the story. 

“They--” Felix began and then he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed deeply. He spoke still looking down. It was difficult to tell if the pink in his cheeks was a blush or simply the wind. “They said they might have a Zoltan. I just went to look and see if it was bullshit.” 

“A Zoltan!” Dimitri exclaimed, his pulse also rising now. He and Felix had been… obsessed, to put it lightly, with the works of the so-called master smith in their youth. Genuine Zoltan work was rare and most of his blades were scattered across museums and family parlor decorations. “Was it real?” 

“I… I don’t know. I think so, but I couldn’t buy it now anyways,” Felix said defensively. “You can’t just bring a sword to your college dormitory.” 

“Yes, but Felix, if this is real… you could have it shipped home, perhaps!” Dimitri said. “What was the shop called?” 

“I’m not telling you; you’ll buy it out from under me,” Felix snapped at him. “And you’ll probably break it, anyways, or leave it to rust in that mess of a room.” 

“I would treat a Zoltan carefully!” Dimitri objected. 

It felt so good to argue like this, not in the terrible, painful way Felix fought with him now. They used to constantly bicker with each other like this, enjoying the challenge of the debate with fondness instead of genuinely trying to hurt one another. 

For a few minutes, though, it was like nothing had changed. It was just Felix and Dimitri, arguing about swords and their embarrassingly little obsessions and unable to spend seconds out of each other’s company without racing back to make some last final point. 

Dimitri imagined that maybe Felix could forgive him eventually and they could go back to being as they were. And he would feel safe again, at last. 

_‘Felix and Dimitri. Can’t spend a second without him, can you? You and the Duscur dog, you’re both slavering after Mr. Perfect. I’d be careful, though. I hear the way he screams every night. You might end up a pile of ashes too if you don’t keep your distance.’_

This time the voice was clearly not real. It was only a memory this time. Mat Gideon’s final words before Dimitri’s fist had collided with his mouth. He remembered the feeling of Gideon’s fist on his cheekbone, the flash of pain, the brief scramble on the ground, how he’d dragged the body off of him and slammed him back into the tree-- 

“What’s the matter?” Felix asked. 

“It’s nothing,” Dimitri said. He felt cold. The path back to campus suddenly seemed very long. He was so tired. “Was the blade… did you see any inscriptions on the steel?” 

“Some runic scrolling around the hilt. No maker’s sign,” Felix replied. But he was closed off again. His light brown eyes lowered to the pavement in front of them.

Dimitri gripped the handle of the plastic bag and heard the blood sloshing in its container. They walked in silence. 

That night after the swim team’s practice had ended, Dimitri showered quickly in the locker room before shrugging his clothes back on and half-jogging back to his room.

His teeth were chattering with cold by the time he returned. His hair was still wet and it made the chill fall winds cut through to the bone. 

He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he shut the door to his room. He looked normal enough, he thought. He combed his hair with his fingers a bit to smooth it down. Then he pulled his mouth into a smile. One of his eyelids twitched again and Dimitri quickly looked away. He hung his towel up in front of the mirror. 

Before he even had the chance to warm up, he unwrapped the plastic tub of ram’s blood and sat on the floor. The Bylaws of the Seven Sages lay open on his knee. He laid a large piece of poster paper down in front of him to avoid staining the tile and then with shaking hands, he dipped a finger into the blood and began to draw. 

It was surprisingly difficult to trace sigils in blood without breaking the lines. He had to dip his finger into the tepid, sticky liquid again and again before he was finished. His eye wouldn’t stop twitching as he worked. He rubbed it irritably. 

When it was finished, his right hand was stained and covered in drying blood. Awkwardly, he shut the tupperware and then looked down at his fingers. This was the part of the plan he had failed to think through. The bathrooms were down the hall and he was a mess. 

Slowly, he peered through a crack in the doorway, praying no one was outside. The hallway seemed empty. He heard some distant laughter from further away by the stairwell. 

Seizing his chance, he slipped out of the door, holding his bloodied hand beneath his armpit. He made it to the lavatories in a few steps and then turned the sink on at full force, scrubbing at his hand until the water turned pink. 

Behind him, he heard the squeaking sound of the shower turning off. Frantically, Dimitri scrubbed harder, nails digging into the creases in his palm as he desperately tried to get his hand clean. 

The curtain swung open and Dimitri turned to see Sylvain stepping out of the shower, wearing nothing but a lazily tied tartan bathrobe. 

“Oh, hey Dimitri,” Sylvain said easily. “You just get out of practice?” 

“Yes,” Dimitri said, keeping his hand underneath the running water just in case. 

“Ingrid and I were about to hang out in my room in a half hour if you’re not busy,” Sylvain offered. “I’ve got a bag over my smoke detector if you’d like to…” 

But as Dimitri turned to look at him, Sylvain trailed off. 

“What?” Dimitri asked. Sylvain made a motion to his face. 

“You’ve got some, uh, stuff, on your eye,” he said. 

Dimitri jerked his head up and looked in the mirror. There was a streak of blood on his brow bone, dried to a dull red. He jerked his hand up to rub water onto it at once, scrubbing at his skin hard enough that it went pink and slightly swollen after. 

_water level fell._

He nearly turned to look for the whisper, but caught himself just in time. 

“Uh, sorry,” Dimitri said quickly. He had no excuse. At least, he had no excuse that didn’t make him look even worse. “Embarrassing. I just…” 

“You alright?” Sylvain asked, squinting at him like he was searching for signs of injury. 

“It’s just for a project,” Dimitri babbled. “I’m working on something for Ancient Lit.” 

“You’re rubbing blood on your face for Ancient Lit?” Sylvain asked. 

“I’m re-enacting an ancient greek, uh, spell,” Dimitri said. He felt his face flushing. Sylvain was looking at him with skepticism. 

His relationship with Sylvian had always been cordial, but they weren’t exactly close enough that Dimitri could just confess to him that he was obsessively trying to summon ghosts to speak with. And if he lost Sylvain and Ingrid’s respect, what then? Who would he have left who still believed in him? 

“That is…” Sylvain said, drawing out the pause and Dimitri’s agony with it, “freaking amazing. You, of all people, are like… summoning a demon or something?” 

“It’s not like that,” Dimitri protested weakly. “It’s just an experiment for class. I know it isn’t real.” 

“Can I watch?” Sylvain asked. His eyes were glowing. He was, Dimitri finally realized, thrilled. “Maybe bring a few lady friends? If you get a girl good and creeped out, she is, like, a hundred times more likely to hold your hand for reassurance.” 

“Please do not invite anyone to this,” Dimitri sighed. “Especially not women you are trying to, ah, seduce through the macabre?” 

“Oh, right, like it’s so pure and academic for you,” Sylvain scoffed. “Come on, Dimitri, at least admit to me that you just think this shit is cool.” 

“It is academically very interesting,” Dimitri said with a huff. “But I’d prefer not to have an audience.” 

“At least let me bring Ingrid,” Sylvain pleaded. “She’s coming over anyways. And I’m sure she’ll take it plenty seriously or whatever.” 

Dimitri bit his lip. Oddly, he did feel better imagining that Sylvain and Ingrid would be there. The thought of sitting alone and trying this in his cold bedroom might make it too… tempting. Too tempting to believe in it. But if Sylvain and Ingrid were watching, then it would be nothing but a foolish collegiate evening of fun. 

“Alright fine,” Dimitri relented. “Just… don’t tell Felix. This sort of thing annoys him.” 

"Yes!” Sylvain said. His robe was getting dangerously loose as he leaned against the doorframe. “Meet you in half an hour then. And, uh, Dimitri?” 

“Yes?” 

“I know this isn’t my business at all, but I figured I’d ask just in case,” Sylvain said, uncharacteristically serious all of sudden. “Did something happen with you and Felix? I know I graduated a year earlier so I’m not so in the loop anymore, but Ingrid can’t figure you two out either.” 

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Dimitri said stiffly. Sylvain’s brow creased. 

“Felix was always a prickly one, but to you he wasn’t usually so, you know,” Sylvain shrugged, “angry?” 

“I cannot speak for Felix’s feelings,” Dimitri replied. “But as for myself, I have no conflict with him. People grow apart sometimes in college, I suppose.” 

“Alright then,” Sylvain said doubtfully. 

A half hour later, Sylvian and Ingrid knocked on his door. Dimitri had hidden away the sticky tub of blood. The symbols on his poster paper looked less gory and garish now that they had dried. Dimitri practiced an easy, friendly smile in the mirror a few times. His eye was still slightly red from where he frantically had to scrub the blood off. 

“Woah, that is some seriously occult looking stuff,” Sylvain said as he saw the poster. “Do we have to like… hold hands and chant?” 

“Come on, this isn’t some campy low-budget horror flick,” Ingrid said with a raise of her eyebrow. “This is historical. Right?” 

She glanced at Dimitri and he couldn’t help but notice she was a tiny bit nervous.

“Right,” he said firmly. “It’s all from a book.” 

And things in books didn’t hurt you. Things in books didn’t whisper in your ear when you knew, knew for certain, that you were all alone. 

Sylvain and Ingrid sat down on the floor across from him and they exchanged slightly guilty grins. Dimitri set a candle in the middle of the circle, the same one Felix had given him the night the power went out, and lit it. 

“Wait, let me get the lights,” Sylvian said, scrambling up to flick them off before Dimitri began. 

“So what is this spell supposed to do?” Ingrid asked once the room was lit only by the flickering candle flame. “Uh, historically speaking?” 

“It is supposed to make you some sort of… oracle, let’s say,” Dimitri said evasively. “So that you can communicate with people from the ancient past.” 

“Who are we chatting with?” Sylvain asked eagerly. 

“I thought, perhaps, a former student,” Dimitri said, hoping neither of them would recall the name of the girl who had vanished thirty years ago. “A young woman I discovered while working in the archives.” 

“Ah, a lady ghost, good,” Sylvain smirked and Ingrid groaned and elbowed him. 

“I will begin now,” Dimitri said. “If that’s alright with you?” 

“Okay,” Ingrid said. “Do we need to hold hands or anything?” 

“I don’t think--” Dimitri began. 

“Probably,” Sylvain said with a shrug. 

Ingrid gratefully put her hand into Sylvain’s. 

Dimitri raised his eyebrows and said nothing. 

He looked down at the book. He was supposed to intone a long set of Greek words he was not entirely certain of how to pronounce and then speak the name of the person he wished to summon. He needed to lay out gold at the northern point of the circle to pay the toll of the dead, he needed salt at the southern point to preserve himself, he needed fruit at the western point to draw the dead back to life, and he needed ash at the eastern point to send the dead away. All had been simple enough to acquire. 

Dimitri looked down at the Greek he’d copied out for himself on a notebook. Slowly, he began to pronounce the words. Ingrid giggled and Sylvain made a ghostly whooshing sound. Dimitri grinned slightly through his recitation. 

_“Εἰνοδίην Ἑκάτην κλῄιζω, τριοδῖτιν, ἐραννήν,_

_οὐρανίην, χθονίαν τε, καὶ εἰναλίην κροκόπεπλον,_

_τυμβιδίην, ψυχαῖς νεκύων μέτα βακχεύουσαν...”_

Dimitri only stumbled a few times in the introduction. Nothing odd seemed to happen. The candle did not flicker, thunder did not rumble suddenly in the distance, he heard nothing in his head. He pressed on with renewed confidence. He held the image of the young woman in his mind’s eye, her curls laid over her shoulder in the one photo he’d seen in the school paper. For a moment, the image of Monica came to him as well, that brief moment where he’d watched her stumble, spill her drink… 

“Ἡγεμόνᾰ κλῄιζω, Ἡγεμόνᾰ κλῄιζω!” 

“What does that mean?” Ingrid asked as Dimitri repeated a phrase several times. “That word you’re saying?” 

“‘I call the Hegemon,’” Dimitri paused to say. “At least… oh, is it the accusative case?” 

“Nevermind, keep going,” Sylvain laughed. 

Dimitri did. He recited the Greek by the meager light of the candle and when he finished he spoke aloud her name. 

“Flayn?” 

The room was silent. The candle flickered and sputtered a bit as the wick grew closer to the wax. 

_follow me._

Dimitri flinched. The voice had sounded real. Could it have been? 

But no. No. He couldn’t allow himself to think that way. 

_find me._

He heard it again. And this time it wasn’t nonsense, wasn’t just random words his brain came up with to torment him, it sounded… 

But it was impossible. He was confused. He had set his expectations to believe in this and now he was losing it, losing it, losing it in front of Sylvain and Ingrid and… 

The candle went out as the door swung open.

Sylvan screamed slightly. Ingrid jumped as well, although she immediately dissolved into hysterical laughter at the sound that had just come from Sylvian’s mouth. A dark figure was silhouetted against the lights in the hall. 

Felix. 

“What the hell is this?” Felix growled. Dimitri recoiled, tried to scatter away the ashes and the salt, hide the apple under his bed. Felix was half-dressed for bed in a pair of flannel pants and a large navy sweater. It made him softer, somehow, although there was nothing soft about his furious expression. 

“Felix, you scared the living shit out of me,” Sylvain panted. “Can’t you knock or something?” 

“Dimitri, what is this?” Felix asked, ignoring Sylvain. 

Dimitri’s breathing was still coming very fast. 

“History project,” he managed to whisper. 

“It’s just for fun, Felix,” Ingrid said, “Don’t be upset we just didn’t invite you; we just thought you wouldn’t enjoy it.” 

“Both of you get the fuck out of here,” Felix snarled. 

Sylvain and Ingrid’s giddy mood seemed to finally break. Ingrid looked like she was about to snap back. 

“It’s okay,” Dimitir said quickly, “I think we’d like to speak privately, if you don’t mind.”

Sylvain and Ingrid exchanged doubtful looks. 

“Well, fun night, Dimitri,” Sylvain said. “Thanks for having us. Pity your date from the ancient past never showed. Next time, buddy, next time.” 

Dimitri hung his head in silence as they both left the room. 

Felix shut the door behind them and flicked on the light. Dimitri squinted at the sudden brightness. The bloody poster paper in front of him looked even worse in the electric light. 

“What were you thinking?” Felix asked after a few moments. His voice was ice cold, but he spoke barely above a whisper. Dimitri hadn’t seen his face like that since Glenn was deployed and then never came home. 

“Felix, please,” Dimitri said. He was still sitting on the ground. His palms were covered in salt and ash. “Don’t.” 

“Don’t what?” Felix demanded. “Don’t tell you when you’re being stupid? Don’t let you forge ahead on your quest to destroy yourself?” 

“Don’t hate me,” Dimitri said quietly. 

Felix didn’t reply to that. He just stared down at the mess on the floor. 

“Why are you doing this?” Felix suddenly asked, changing tack. “Why can’t you just let this go?” 

“I thought…” Dimitri began. “I know it isn’t real, Felix, I swear. But the missing girl, Monica. I wanted to try just in case… and if not, well, then I would have my reassurance.” 

“You say you know what is real,” Felix began. “You say you’re under control. You say it won’t happen again. And then I find you trying some dark magic in your dorm room with Ingrid and fucking Sylvain all because some girl transferred out of the school?” 

“I didn’t hurt anyone,” Dimitri said. He couldn’t bear to look at Felix. He sat on the floor, letting Felix loom over him for once. 

“Dimitri, what do you think happened to Mat Gideon?” 

It wasn’t so much the question as the way he said it. Dimitri looked up.

Felix wasn’t just angry anymore. He was frightened. Dimitri had frightened him again. 

Dimitri closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He let himself remember the night, the side of the backroad between the school and the practice fields, the dark woods looming behind the glow of the headlights. Gideon had always been cruel. He had always been jealous of Dimitri and that made him nasty to Felix and downright monstrous to Dedue. 

He’d tried to run their car off of the road. That was how it had started. Gideon had started it. That was important. 

He’d tried to run the car off the road, Dimitri had barely avoided getting forced into a ditch, and then he’d pulled over and gotten out. Gideon had said things and Felix had grabbed Dimitri’s arm and tried to hold him back. And then Dimitri had punched Gideon right in the face. 

Everything after that was a blur of sound and pounding blood and the pain of his knuckles connecting with Gideon’s mouth and the rough feeling of bark against his arms. The details were blessedly vague. 

And the voices had been screaming. That part probably didn’t matter to anyone but him.

But they were not whispers that night. They howled. Some screamed with agony, others roared with wild laughter. And he heard them too loudly to pay attention to anything else. 

When it was over, Gideon had stumbled to his feet. 

“Go home,” Dimitri had managed to wheeze through the blood pouring from his nose. 

And wordlessly, Gideon had gotten back into his still idling car and driven away. And at 4:32 AM that night, his car flipped into oncoming traffic less than half a mile from his parent’s house. 

“Dimitri?” 

Felix’s voice broke him from his thoughts. 

“I killed him,” Dimitri finally admitted. “I killed him, Felix, I killed him. He shouldn’t have gotten in the car… his head… I did something to his head…” 

He felt his breaths coming very fast. He put his head down between his knees. 

“So you do remember,” Felix said bitterly. Dimitri nodded as best as he could with his head still lowered. “Then maybe you remember why you need to stay away from all of this stuff.” 

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said. 

He heard Felix shift and then sigh. 

“I can’t keep doing this,” Felix finally said. “If you can’t let it go, I can’t let you keep going down this path. And if it has to be me who stops you, then… then I will stop you.” 

Dimitri heard him move to the door, turn the handle. He paused in the doorway for a moment. Dimitri kept his eyes on the floor. The door shut. 

Dimitri looked up. 

That was when he finally noticed the ghost.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone here speaks Greek I am sorry. @cyranonic on twitter if you want to discuss the accusative case.


	3. Chapter 3

She was standing beside his bed. 

Her. The ghost.

Curls fell around her shoulders and she wore an old-fashioned dress with a wide skirt. Her face, however, was a wreck. Half of it was crushed inwards and something had happened to her skin that made it swollen and discolored. 

When she stood still, she looked almost real, tangible. It was only when she moved that he could tell she wasn’t. Her motions left little trails in the air, like a camera with a slow shutter speed, blurring around every motion. Her feet didn’t quite touch the ground as she turned and walked out of the room. 

Dimitri sat on the floor, stunned into silence. 

Then he got up, threw his coat back over his shoulder and followed her. 

Outside, the wind was whipping at the tree branches, making them groan and creak as they scratched against one another. The girl moved quickly, clearly faster than the speed of her motions should allow. Her path, however, was clear. She was walking towards the forested hill that rose up behind the campus. 

There were a few paths through the woods, but her route followed none of them. Dimitri walked behind her. His shoes slid against wet pine needles and tree roots. He felt his breath quicken as they climbed the hill. 

Once the trees closed up around him, the forest was pitch black. The moon was a waning crescent in the sky and provided little light through the canopy of trees. His eyes struggled to adjust and he had to hold his hands out in front of him to avoid walking into anything. 

The girl, however, remained clearly visible. In the darkness she gave off a faint luminescent glow, a sickly greenish tint. In the dark, he saw occasional flashes of her bones through her skin, as though his eyes could read her in layers.

He kept following. 

If it was real, he thought, _if_ it was real, then he had to follow. And if it wasn’t… well, if it wasn’t then Felix would deal with him regardless. His uncle would withdraw him from college and he’d have to go home, or possibly to a hospital for a while if Rufus thought it prudent. 

He would never go to law school. He would lose Sylvain and Ingrid and every person who he’d ever met would whisper the same things. " _ Blaidydd, right, from the fire. Heard he lost it. So sad. Unless, of course, well, they never did say how that fire started…"  _

He took a sharp intake of breath. The girl had stopped. Silently, she held out an arm, gesturing ahead of her. One of her eyes was sagging down her ruined cheek, but the other was fixed on him. 

“I see you,” Dimitri whispered. A blast of cold wind tore beneath his coat and he shuddered. 

His eyes followed where she pointed and realized that despite the darkness, he was about to step into a clearing. No, not just a clearing. There was a house. 

There was an old house with the windows boarded up and the roof partially caved in. In the dim moonlight, Dimitri could barely make out the shape of it against the night sky. It loomed over the clearing, nothing but a massive black void in the gloom. 

As he watched, Dimitri thought for a moment that the house was moving, that some great black tendrils were unfurling from the roof, as though it was coming to life before his eyes. 

Then his mind put the image together and he realized it was more of the blackbirds. They had nested on the partially collapsed roof and they stirred at the sound of his footsteps. 

When he glanced back to find the girl, she was gone. For a moment, he felt seized with panic, stumbling around and looking for any sign of her or any light at all. 

She had reappeared, he realized with strange relief, at the side of the house. She was standing beside a low circle of stones, also boarded up. Probably an old well, Dimitri thought, as he stepped closer to examine it. 

The boards were nailed tightly over the entrance, although with enough force he could probably pry them up. For a moment, he considered it. The girl stared at him, expressionless but for the way that her cheek sloped down and her forehead caved in on the left side. 

_ she’s not in there anymore. _

The voice was quiet, as genderless and ambigious as always. This time, though, Dimitri answered. 

“She’s not in the well?” Dimitri asked. “Monica?” 

“Is someone here?” 

The voice was close enough and real enough that Dimitri tripped over himself and ended up sprawling in the damp grass.

The beam of a flashlight emerged from around the side of the house, cutting through the darkness so brightly that it nearly blinded him. He held up his hand to his eyes to make out the figure. A young woman, wrapped in a dark maroon coat, striking with her pale hair.

“Edelgard!” Dimitri managed to say through his chattering teeth. 

She lowered the flashlight, letting his eyes adjust again to the darkness. 

“Dimitri?” she said hesitantly. “What are you doing here?” 

“I was…” he began desperately, although he had no idea what he would say. He glanced around quickly. The spectral form of the girl was gone. If she had ever even been there in the first place. “I was just…” 

“Nevermind,” Edelgard said with a faint smile. “I’d forgotten. You’re the one reading about the Seven Sages. Of course I’d find you here.” 

“What do you mean?” Dimitri asked, getting to his feet and brushing the damp off of his pants. 

“Arundel House,” Edelgard said, gesturing to the building behind her. “This was the Seven Sages meeting house until they closed it up.” 

Dimitri felt his breath catch a little. Then the girl, the ghost, had led him to…

“Is there anything left inside?” Dimitri asked breathlessly. Edelgard shrugged. 

“The doors are locked and the windows are boarded,” she said, “but with that hole in the roof, I doubt anything of value. I think the college considered buying the land, but the owner didn’t want to sell.” 

“I had no idea it was still here,” Dimitri said and then cleared his throat. “Ah, we keep meeting in such interesting places, Edelgard. Are you also here for the house?” 

“I just like to walk,” Edelgard said. “Other students avoid the paths back here. They say it’s haunted.” 

“And you aren’t afraid?” Dimitri asked. “Or are you hoping to see something?” 

“I’ve never understood why people are afraid of ghosts,” Edelgard said. “If someone you lost was truly still out there, wouldn’t you want to know? To see them again? Speak to them?” 

“I would,” Dimitri said. He braced himself for a moment. He was already out here, freezing cold and half-mad and with nothing to go back to. He might as well go for it. “El?” 

She tilted her head slightly. There was no recognition in her eyes. 

“I prefer my full name,” she said after a moment. “Although I know it’s a mouthful.” 

He felt his hopes fall. She truly did not remember him. She was one of the last living members of his family he had any fondness for and she did not remember him. It was freezing outside. Why hadn’t he worn gloves or a scarf or anything but his wool coat? 

“Sorry,” Dimitri said, “you just remind me of someone I knew a long time ago. An old friend.” 

Edelgard assessed him for a moment. She was still perfectly composed. He was erratic. He was probably alarming her. 

“Well, I haven’t spotted any ghosts here yet,” Edelgard finally said. It was impossible to tell from her tone if she was playful or serious. “So I suppose I’ll be heading home. It’s getting cold.” 

“What would you do if you did?” Dimitri asked rashly, stopping her in her tracks as she turned to leave. “If you did see something? Would you even believe it?”

“I lost my brothers and sisters when I was eleven years old,” Edelgard said. Dimitri felt like he’d been slapped. “I was the only survivor. So it might sound silly, but I believe in fate. I have a path to walk. I don’t waste time doubting myself. If you believe something, then stay the course. Don’t hold yourself back for the sake of other people’s comfort.” 

The wind whipped her coat around her and for the first time, Dimitri realized that her hair wasn’t just bleached. It was white. It had faded from brown to pure white. 

“If you saw a ghost then,” Dimitri managed to say over the increasing roar of the wind. “What would you do?” 

Edelgard’s mouth was a firm line. 

“Isn’t it obvious?” she said fiercely. “I’d try to bring it back.” 

She turned away and began walking back towards campus.

Dimitri watched her go, his whole body shaking with the cold. 

It had to be real. It all had to be real now. Edelgard had as much as told him she would believe him. 

And the girl, the ritual, the Seven Sages. All of it had to be real now. If he could just convince Felix, if he could just explain that he wasn’t crazy, that he wasn’t delusional… 

_ go home.  _

Dimitri whipped around at the sound of the whisper. He almost expected what he saw. 

Behind him, still and expressionless, was the flickering shape of Mat Gideon. 

His nose was crushed, bleeding, and there were dark bruises around his neck. He stared at Dimitri with empty eyes. 

“Go away,” Dimitri whispered. “Go.” 

He forced himself to turn his head and stop looking. He wrapped his arms around himself, trying to draw his coat closer to keep out the cold. 

_ go home.  _

The whisper came again, more insistent this time. Dimitri did not turn; resolutely, he bowed his head and began to stumble back towards the woods and back towards campus. He caught the shape of something out of the corner of his eye. 

When he glanced up, he felt his stomach seize. 

It was Glenn. It was Felix’s older brother, still wearing the uniform he’d been deployed in. 

His stomach was stained dark and glossy with blood where the shrapnel had punctured through the skin. His face looked so similar, so lifelike, just as it had been at the funeral. Unlike the casket, though, his eyes were open, staring at Dimitri with solemn recognition. 

“Stop it,” Dimitri whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to keep walking. Why was he seeing this? Why Gideon? Why Glenn? Was this just another trap, a trick set by his own mind? 

Or…? 

Or even worse, had he opened a door without knowing how to close it? 

Branches scratched at his face as he ran blindly through the trees. His foot slipped on a patch of wet leaves and he skidded onto his knees. He felt his palms tearing open where he’d caught himself, felt the sting of blood beginning to well up there. 

_ go home. go home.  _

Dimitri pushed himself to his feet. They were standing right in front of him this time. 

His parents. 

His father had burned badly enough that they’d never let him see the body. His torso was a mass of bubbling skin and blackened tissue hanging off of bones. His hair and beard had been scorched away, leaving only one piercing blue eyes recognizable while the rest of his face was nothing more than a mottled skull. His stepmother looked more like herself. It had been the smoke, he’d heard, not the flame, that had taken her. Her face was blotchy with burst veins and her mouth was too wide, her lips broken and peeled back from her teeth.

He couldn’t look at them. 

He put his hands over his eyes, pressing down so hard it hurt. 

“No, no, no,” he panted. “It isn’t real. Please don’t let it be real. Leave me alone, leave me alone!” 

He felt something ice cold touch the back of his hand, a single finger tracing down the length of his arm. 

Dimitri scrambled to his feet and bolted. He ran frantically, eyes open this time. Trees loomed around him, disorienting him. Only the downward slope of the hill led him in the right direction. 

Through the darkness, he spotted them, his ghosts, glowing faintly all around him. They never moved, but he couldn’t outrun them, couldn’t shake them. 

He had summoned a spirit. But he had forgotten how to lay it back to rest. 

When he burst out of the trees and back into the open paths of the campus, he spun around, checking his surroundings again. A streetlight cast a yellowish glow over the sidewalk around him, reassuring in its familiar presence. His lungs burned and sweat was starting on his face, but he was still freezing cold. Why was he still so cold? 

A pale face emerged from the woods behind him as he watched. 

They were following him. 

Dimitri tore off running again. Part of him knew it was pointless. One could not outrun the dead. But another part of him was filled with sheer animal panic and the only thing he could do was bolt. 

He spotted the dark shape of another student smoking on the fire escape. Someone else was hurrying across the quad far away. He slowed his pace, suddenly self-conscious of his erratic movements. 

When he made it back to his dormitory, his feet pounded up the stairs as fast as he could without sprinting. He needed to look behind him. He couldn’t look behind him. 

He made it back to the hall and to his door before he finally glanced over his shoulder. It only took a glimpse. Pressing against the window, a pale face. 

He felt his breathing begin to accelerate, coming faster and faster as he fumbled with his keys. He didn’t know where else he could run. They were following him and he was afraid and he had done something stupid, so incredibly stupid. He didn’t care anymore if they were real. They were real enough.

The keys slipped through his fingers and he cursed as he stooped to pick them up. His door finally opened. It was dark inside but he could see the remains of scattered ash and salt on the floor, the bloodied poster still shoved halfway under his bed. The air was freezing.

As he watched, a figure stepped out from the shadowed corner beside his bed, burned flesh flaking off of his body as he moved. His father stretched out his blackened, twisted hand, and gently patted the pillow of his bed. 

_ go home. _

Dimitri heard a strangled scream from his own throat. He shut the door. His legs carried him down the hall. He had no idea where they were taking him until he stood in front of the door. 

For a second, his hand hesitated, and then he knocked, perhaps a little harder than he meant. Another shiver ran through his body as he waited. 

A moment later the door opened and Felix was standing there. His eyes looked heavy with sleep and his hair was ruffled. He still wore the overlarge sweater, enveloping his sharpness with warm comfort. 

“Dimitri, what are you--?” he began, voice rough with sleep and not as harsh as usual. 

“Felix,” Dimitri said, his voice a painful, helpless whisper. “Help me. Please. Help me.” 

“What’s going on?” Felix asked, shaking off his grogginess. He didn’t look angry. Dimitri searched his face wildly for any sign of hatred or resentment, but what he found was… worry. Felix reached out, grabbed onto one of Dimitri’s hands, flipped it over to examine the still bloody scrapes on his palms. “You’re freezing, where have you been?”

“I--” Dimitri choked. He couldn’t seem to speak anymore. His head twitched to look behind him again, but he thought better of it and kept his eyes on Felix.

Felix, who could be so warm when he wanted to be. Felix, who worried about him. Felix, who, in all those years of boarding schools and summers awkwardly spent shuttling between his uncle’s lonely house and any summer camp or sport he could find, had always been his home. 

Dimitri stepped forward, put his icy cold fingers on either side of Felix’s face, and drew him into a kiss. 

It was a frantic, messy kiss. Dimitri had no idea what he was doing, but he kissed Felix like a lifeline, like he was drowning. He hadn’t ever kissed another boy before. Perhaps more importantly, he hadn’t ever kissed someone while his whole body was still trembling with pure terror. 

Felix’s mouth was very warm. 

Felix pulled back. His eyes were wide with shock. 

“What the hell was that?” he asked after a few seconds of catching his breath. 

“I’ve spent too long locking most of my feelings away,” Dimitri admitted. What was the point in hiding it anymore? He’d wasted so many stupid years keeping his feelings carefully unconsidered, ignoring the way his eyes sometimes strayed, hating himself for every pang of awkward teenaged longing. So much time spent doubting and rationalizing and repressing when it could have been so easy. It could have been easy before. 

He spoke in a rush. “I kept trying and trying to be this person, this person I’m not, but I can’t anymore. Felix, I need you. I’m sorry. I need you.” 

Felix stared at him, his eyes evaluating. Dimitri suspected he looked just as wild and out of control as he felt. 

Then abruptly, Felix yanked him through the door, pulling his head down into another kiss. He felt a hint of teeth on his lips and heard the door slam behind them as Felix dragged him a few steps forward and over to his bed. 

Dimitri had only kissed a few people in his life, and it had never been like this. His kisses had been light, lips mostly closed, entirely proper affairs. They were absolutely nothing like this. 

His body was still freezing cold and he pressed into Felix’s embrace with a need that surprised them both, sending them toppling onto the mattress. Felix ripped his coat off and began working at the sweater beneath it until Dimitri finally helped to shrug it over his head and shoulders, leaving him in only the button down. 

Felix’s kisses were hard. He sucked against Dimitri’s bottom lip and darted his tongue in to swirl around Dimitri’s mouth. One of his hands gripped the back of his hair, sending a shiver down Dimitri’s spine that this time had nothing to do with fear or cold. He felt Felix’s other hand on his back, clawing down his shoulders with just a hint of nails. 

Dimitri had no idea where to put his hands or what to do with his lips or his tongue, so he merely clung on for dear life, hoping that he did not crush Felix in the process. One of his hands found a few strands of long hair that had come loose and he reveled in the silky texture. 

For a few minutes, his head and the world around him were totally quiet. 

Felix pushed him down onto the pillows, one hand still buried in his hair as the other hand pinned Dimitri’s wrists above his head. He felt the pressure of Felix’s hips atop his own and a sharp gasp escaped his lips before he felt his body arch up into that touch and… 

“Fuck,” Felix panted, sittting up and releasing his hold on Dimitri. He made a frustrated sound in his throat and then rolled over to the side. His chest was rising and falling rapidly and his face was flushed. He looked beautiful. 

Dimitri reached a hand up to brush a few strands of hair away from Felix’s cheek. 

“What’s wrong?” Dimitri asked as Felix frowned at the touch. The cold was already beginning to settle into him again after that brief and wonderful glow of heat. 

Felix was repelled by him again. He was going to leave him alone. 

“This isn’t the right time,” Felix said. “You’re not… I don’t want to do this when you’re clearly terrified.” 

“Felix, I swear, my feelings are genuine,” Dimitri said quickly. “They frightened me before. It wasn’t that I was ashamed, I just… I don’t know. I’ve always felt wrong about everything about me. I would have told you, but, well... you’ve always been braver.” 

“I can’t tell what you feel anymore, Dimitri,” Felix said, suddenly sounding very tired again. He ran a hand down his face. “We used to trust each other. But now you lie to me. You lie to me every single day. This was a mistake.”

“I lie to you, Felix, because I don’t want you to--” Dimitri felt his throat closing up. He struggled to compose himself, blinking rapidly. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me anymore.”

“Dimitri,” Felix said, his name a desperate sound, “I’m not afraid of you. I have never been afraid of you. I am afraid _ for  _ you. I am afraid because I’ve been balancing on the edge of losing you since last year.” 

The words felt like they were splitting his chest open. He felt a sense of relief, but also some wildly overwhelming enormous emotion he couldn’t put a name to. 

“Then let me stay, Felix, let me stay,” Dimitri begged. He felt his shoulders drawing up as more shivers shook his body. Felix grabbed his hand and made a noise of distress to find it so cold again. 

That was apparently all it took. 

The whole long night of fear and horror, the whole damn year of tension, finally seemed to erupt. He felt his mouth drawing tight, the corners of his lips pulling down. His eyes stung as a few tears gathered in his eyelashes. He tried to draw a breath, but it was difficult. His throat felt like it was closing as he heard a few whimpers escape his mouth. 

As a rule, Dimitri did not often cry, especially not in front of other people. He’d had years of practice smiling and waiting for the urge to pass. There was something about grief, he’d quickly discovered after the fire, that disgusted people as much as it also made them sympathetic. 

But right then, it felt like all of those years of practiced numbness were crashing down along with all of his other walls, leaving the raw awful parts of him exposed.

“Hey, no,” Felix said with alarm. He hastily pulled Dimitri forward again into his arms. Although Dimitri was larger, Felix guided his head down to his shoulder and let it rest there. “I never said you couldn’t stay. I just… we’ll figure it out, okay? We’ll figure it out in the morning.” 

Dimitri could do nothing in response but gulp down a few more breaths of air and dry his eyes against Felix’s shoulder. All of the adrenaline was beginning to fade and in its place, he felt exhausted beyond anything he could ever remember. 

“I’m so sorry,” he finally managed to say, his voice coming out strangled and thick. 

Felix rubbed his hand in hesitant circles against Dimitri’s back. There was something deeply comforting about the fact that Felix clearly had no idea how to be soothing. 

“Just get some sleep here tonight,” Felix said firmly. “You look like you could use it.” 

Dimitri nodded wearily, feeling like if he just closed his eyes for a moment, he could fall asleep right against Felix’s shoulder. Felix, however, moved. He went down the hall to the bathrooms and returned with a damp washcloth to help clean the blood from Dimitri’s scraped palms. He lent him a shirt to sleep in and then tucked the covers back into position after their frantic kisses had rumpled them. 

When he flicked off the light, Dimitri resisted the urge to glance around at the windows and the corners. Instead, he turned onto his side, facing where Felix was lying, stiff and slightly awkward beside him in the twin sized bed. He watched Felix breathing for a few moments until his eyelids sagged shut and he slept. 

When he awoke, it was late morning. 

Sunlight was already streaming through the window and Dimitri felt like he might have been asleep for weeks rather than hours. For a brief moment, he felt cautiously happy. What had happened last night had been horrible and scary and yet at the end… wonderful. 

Then he scanned the room for the clock, and realized with a jolt of panic that it was eleven in the morning. He’d slept through his first two classes of the day. 

“Good, you’re up,” Felix said, noticing Dimitri stirring. He was dressed and sitting at his desk, quietly working through equations with his books. He wore black on black as usual, a high necked sweater tucked into black cropped trousers. Dimitri felt an uncomfortable flash of warmth as he remembered those muscular legs pressing against his sides. “Seems like you needed the rest.” 

“Why didn’t you wake me for class?” Dimitri asked, rubbing his face and struggling upright to start grabbing for his clothes.

Felix shot him a piercing look and Dimitri stopped fumbling for his shirt and belt. 

“We have a more important appointment,” Felix said evenly, “which is you telling me what the hell is going on with you and where you were last night that put you in this state.” 

Dimitri ducked his head at the tone. All of the gentleness of the night was gone and Felix was back to being angry with him. 

The sunlight was a bright reddish gold as one tree outside of the window was still clinging to its orange foliage. It lent a warm diffusion to the entire room. Dimitri’s head ached fiercely, each glint of sun feeling like a knife into his eyes. 

“Alright,” Dimitri finally said. “I will try to explain. And I promise not to lie to you this time. Just give me a moment.” 

Felix nodded and leaned back in his chair, one ankle resting against his knee, his tapping foot the only indication that he was a bit on edge. 

Dimitri extricated himself from the bed and methodically folded the covers back into position. He turned his back to Felix so that he could pull off the cotton t-shirt and redress himself in his chinos and navy sweater. His shirt was horribly wrinkled after spending the night crumpled on the floor, but he did his best to smooth it all out and make himself something presentable. 

Finally, he sat back on the edge of the bed. There was no other chair for him in the room. 

“So,” he said finally, folding his hands in front of him and facing Felix directly. “I believe that I have gone mad.” 

Felix snorted. 

“Sure,” he scoffed. “Anything else?” 

“I hear voices in my head. You know this already. I slipped up that night in front of you. I responded to them,” Dimitri said. It felt better to say these things so calmly in the light of day. “But there is more.” 

“Go on then,” Felix said impatiently. 

“I think that Monica’s disappearance is related to an incident thirty years prior involving a group known as the Seven Sages,” Dimitri admitted. “Which might be because I am mad. But also… I’m not sure. On the off-chance that it is real, I can’t just let another young woman go missing. Even if she is already dead, I cannot just ignore it.” 

“You always have to be the savior,” Felix said, an odd mix of bitter tone in his voice and fond admiration on his face. “Even when it could cost you everything.” 

“Felix, I know you think I’m just obsessed, in some sort of psychotic spiral, but I saw something last night. I went to their house, Arundel House, out in the backwood, and I saw something,” Dimitri took a deep breath. His head was pounding with pain, but he ignored it. “Something different than just voices and dreams. I saw… Felix, I believe I saw a ghost.” 

Felix looked at him, his eyes fixed on his face. Dimitri had been expecting a laugh or perhaps a furious tirade. He had braced himself to hear Felix call him delusional. The blow did not come. 

“Who?” Felix asked. 

Dimitri stared at him in silence for a moment, too shocked to think. 

“Who was the ghost?” Felix asked more insistently. 

“I-- It was-- there were a lot,” Dimitri finally managed to stammer. “But one of them, Felix, one of them was the girl who went missing thirty years ago, the girl I was trying to speak to when you came in last night!” 

“Of course,” Felix laughed darkly. He rubbed his forehead. “Well, I hope you’re happy.” 

“Felix, why aren’t you… you know...” Dimitri finally burst out with, “why do you believe me?” 

Felix looked up and tilted his head. His brows drew together for a moment, a look of confusion and then hurt. 

“Because I was there, Dimitri,” he said with caution. “You know that. I saw everything that night.” 

“What are you talking about?”

“Dimitri, I watched you,” Felix stood up abruptly, shoving his chair back from his desk.  “I watched you snap his neck and then just… just bring him back.” 

“I don’t understand,” Dimitri said. 

His pulse was pounding in his head. He rubbed at his temples, trying to soothe away the tension and the pain. 

“You don’t remember...” Felix said slowly, his voice going low and hoarse. “Fuck, you don’t even remember. Dimitri, all this time… I thought you were just ignoring it, lying through your teeth like the repressed idiot you always have been, but you thought… you thought what? That I was angry with you because you were hearing things?”

“What do you mean I don’t remember!” Dimitri said, his words coming out louder than he meant. “I remember the night Gideon and I had a fight, I remember I hit him, I remember it was bad, but then he got up, he went to his car…”

“Dimitri, you killed him,” Felix whispered. He was hesitating, as though unsure whether to close the distance between them or stay back. “It was an accident, I know, and he was the one who started the fight, but… he was dead. I saw him. You shoved him into a tree and snapped his neck. And then you told him to go home and he… he just got back up. He walked to his car with his head twisted and he just… he went home.” 

Dimitri looked at Felix. Suddenly the light was agonizing. He could barely see and his jaw was flexing painfully and he couldn’t understand what Felix was saying. 

“What do you mean… he went home?” Dimitri finally managed to whisper. 

“He was dead on the ground,” Felix said, his voice shaking slightly. “And you were kneeling over him and you said something to someone I couldn’t see and then he just… moved. But it wasn’t Gideon anymore. He just moved. And he tried to do what you told him. They found his car only a few miles from his parents' house.” 

“No,” Dimitri said. He felt like he was going to be sick. “No, that’s not right.” 

“Dimitri, I thought you knew, I swear, I thought you understood,” Felix was pale. His voice trembled slightly. “I wouldn’t have been so hard on you, I just thought you were shutting me out, pretending like it never happened.” 

“I have to go,” Dimitri lurched to his feet, trying to get to the door. “I have classes.” 

“Dimitri!” 

Felix caught him by the wrist as he reached for the handle. Dimitri wrenched his arm back. 

“Leave me alone,” Dimitri managed to mumble before he made it through the door. His head hurt so badly he could barely walk straight. 

He didn’t go back to his room. He just stumbled down the stairs and out into the blinding sunlight. Nothing felt real. 

Because it couldn’t be real. He was just Dimitri. A little boring. A little sad. Maybe even a little crazy. But definitely not able to raise the dead. 

As he ducked into the shade of a building and pressed his face into his hands to try to block out the light, he felt his body begin to slide down to the ground. He’d had migraines before, but they were nothing like this. 

The last thing he saw before his vision divided into dark spots and double images was Edelgard kneeling down beside him and pressing a cold hand to his forehead. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter after this with one more ~spooky twist~


	4. Chapter 4

He hadn’t exactly fainted. 

Instead, it was like he was slightly outside of his body, as though reality had shifted just a fraction to the left and, for some reason, he hadn’t moved with it. He was aware of standing. Or rather, he was aware of being pulled to his feet and someone supporting him as he walked. 

All around him, the world was a mass of conflicting whispers, words overlapping and swelling in and out of his range of hearing. He picked out a syllable here and there, but he could make so sense of it. All the pleasant sounds of birds and students laughing as they walked between classes were replaced with the shifting hiss of the whispers. 

His eyes felt wrong when he opened them. It was like he wasn’t actually looking through his own eyes. As he turned his head, he caught a glimpse of his own face in his periphery. But it also did not look like his face. It was the face from the mirror, that odd off-kilter smile. 

He squeezed his eyes shut again, but it didn’t help. The sun shone through his eyelids and made the world a dark red, as though a curtain of blood closed over everything. And even closed, he could still see them. The young women with the curls and the smashed face. Gideon with those dark bruises swelling on his neck. Glenn pressed a hand to the blood-slick mess of his abdomen. His parents. His empty-eyed parents. 

Slowly, it occurred to him that he wasn’t moving anymore. He was lying down somewhere dark. He felt something cold on his face and jerked a hand up to rip it off before realizing that it was just a damp cloth laid over his eyes. 

He felt dizzy and sore, but the agonizing pain was ebbing away. Slowly, he peeled the cloth off of one of his eyes and glanced around the room. It was a very dark room, but blessedly so. He was lying on a narrow cot, clearly not intended for anyone to actually sleep in. There were cabinets on the walls and a scale in the corner. 

The health center, he finally realized. Someone had brought him to the student health center. 

Gingerly, he removed the damp cloth and then he sat up as quickly as he dared. The door creaked open as he moved and a woman slid into the room. She wore a name tag to mark her as a nurse, although the slightly scandalous cut of her shirt might make the average person think otherwise.

“Don’t sit up too quickly,” she whispered as Dimitri grimaced at the light from the hallway. She was holding a paper cup of water that she set down on the table beside the cot. “Here.” 

Dimitri drank as instructed. The water helped immensely. 

“You took a few ibuprofen half an hour ago,” the nurse said. “Has your physician at home ever prescribed you a medication for migraines?” 

“In my room,” Dimitri murmured. “Didn’t take it in time.” 

“Alright, well, if you need a referral to a local physician, let me know,” the nurse said. “Stay here as long as you’d like. I’m having the front desk print you a medical record for any missed classes.” 

“How long have I been asleep?” Dimitri asked. There was a clock on the wall but he didn’t feel up to squinting in the darkness quite yet. 

“Your friend dropped you off around noon,” the nurse said. “It’s four o’clock now.” 

“My friend?” 

“Another student, at the very least,” the nurse said. “Can I bring you something to eat? Your blood sugar might be rather low.” 

“Anything is fine,” Dimitri said mechanically. His thoughts were slow, but gradually they began to race once again. 

His friend had brought him to the health center. Edelgard. He’d seen her right before he’d lost it. She must have been the one who had half-carried him here. 

He had to talk to her again. She knew something, he had decided. If he had any ally in this horrible business of ghosts and cults, she was it. 

As soon as the nurse returned with a protein bar, Dimitri gulped it down. He finished the water and began to shift his feet to the floor with determination. He had to get out of there. Spending more time languishing in the dark would do nothing to help stop the things that were happening to him. The only way out was through, he decided, and through meant understanding the truth of all this. Something, he thought firmly, had to be real. Edelgard would know what. 

“I’d like to go back to my room if that’s alright,” Dimitri said once he’d finished eating. “Am I free to leave?” 

“I really might recommend a referral--” the nurse began. Dimitri started pulling his shoes back on. 

“I’ll contact my doctor,” Dimitri lied. “I’d like to go now.”

“Sign out at the front desk with your ID,” the nurse sighed, apparently sensing defeat. 

He made it back to his room before classes let out at the quarter hour. The mostly empty campus looked peaceful. The bright sunlight had faded to a slate grey sky and gusty wind rustled the bare branches of trees. A few old dry leaves scuttled across the ground and somewhere in the distance Dimitri heard the mournful call of a blackbird. 

When he returned to his room, he finally took a shower. He changed his clothes, putting on a thick grey cable-knit sweater that had once been his father’s. He’d found it after the fire at his uncle’s house: the last thing he had of his old life that hadn’t been smoke damaged. He lay down after his hair had dried and tried to think with his eyes closed. 

So the ghosts had told him to go home. He’d assumed it was a hostile message at first, warning him away from Arundel House. Now, however, if what Felix had said was true…

Well, perhaps the ghosts were curious about a person who had apparently once raised the dead. 

On the same subject, why had the Seven Sages included a ritual for contacting a spirit in their Bylaws? It seemed less likely now that it was all good fun, a juvenile fascination with the macabre to entertain bored collegiate men with a taste for their own smug erudition. 

And what on earth was the Hegemon their spells always referenced? Dimitri had assumed it referred to the leader of the society, but now he had his doubts.

If he had called on the Hegemon last night and asked to speak to the dead, why hadn’t he stopped seeing them? And what did they seem to want from him, particularly the ghosts of his parents and Glenn who ought not to be lingering so near? 

And, the worst thought of all, what if he was really, truly lost at this point? What if none of it was real and he’d imagined everything? What if he’d imagined going to Felix’s room in the first place, imagined kissing him, imagining him kissing back…? 

Dimitri started up at the sound of a knock on his door. 

“Dimitri?” Ingrid’s voice called through the wood. “Are you awake? We brought you some dinner.” 

Dimitri sat up quickly and answered the door. He glanced in the mirror before he turned the handle. He looked normal enough, although there was something he didn’t like about his eyes. The shadow’s beneath them were too dark and there seemed to be something subtly mismatched about his pupils. 

He opened the door to find both Sylvain and Ingrid with a paper bag of food. 

“Ah, thank you,” Dimitri said. “I had forgotten it was nearly time for dinner.” 

“It’s almost seven actually,” Ingrid said. “You might have been napping.” 

Dimitri glanced at the clock to find she was right. 

“Do you want to get back to bed or should we come in for a bit?” Sylvain asked. “Visit your bedside or read to you or whatever?” 

“I’m really just fine,” Dimitri said with a flush of embarrassment. “It’s just a migraine. I’ve had them my whole life.” 

“That’s what Felix said, but he…” Ingrid paused and glanced at Sylvain. “He seemed really worried about you. He said we should check in since he had to run to town for an errand after he dropped you off.” 

“Dropped me off?” Dimitri asked. 

“At the health center,” Sylvain explained. “He said he had to walk you over there this morning. Shit, Dimitri, I never realized this was so bad… I would have… I dunno, done something.”

“He didn’t,” Dimitri said, unsure what to make of Felix apparently lying to Sylvain and Ingrid. “Edelgard took me to the health center.” 

“Edelgard?” Ingrid said. Her face was blank with confusion. 

“Another student here,” Dimitri explained, “she was at that party we went to with Dorothea.” 

“Dimitri, are you talking about Edelgard von Hresvelg?” Sylvain asked. He spoke slowly, using the same tone of voice Dimitri had heard him use at the stables to calm a horse. “Your step-sister?” 

“Ah, yes,” Dimitri admitted. “I wasn’t sure if you remembered that. We haven’t been in contact for some time. I did not actually know she was attending Garreg Mach until I arrived.” 

“Dimitri, I think, uh, I think maybe we should go back to the health center,” Sylvain said, even his usually jovial mood beginning to fray. “You aren’t-- you aren’t yourself right now.” 

Dimitri glanced at Ingrid in confusion, but she was looking at him in the same way. That same look of concern mingled with fear. 

“I feel fine,” Dimitri said, although he heard his voice shake. “What is the matter?” 

“You’re talking about Edelgard like she’s…” Ingrid took a deep breath, “alive.” 

Dimitri opened his mouth. Then he closed it. He stood there for a few seconds in total silence. He saw that Ingrid’s mouth was moving again, but he couldn’t hear anything she was saying. 

“--when she was eleven,” Ingrid was saying. “It was a horrible story. Her uncle cut the gas lines in their house and everyone in the family died in their sleep.”

“Oh no,” Dimitri whispered. “No.” 

Edelgard was dead. Edelgard had never been here alive. 

She’d never spoken to anyone else, had she? And he’d never mentioned her before either. Even that first time, that first day, when he’d seen her and Felix had asked him what he was looking at… 

“You knew about this, Dimitri, I know your parents must have told you,” Sylvain said. His face was pale white and his hands were trembling. “It was all over the news for weeks, the Arundel tragedy.”

“The what?” Dimitri managed to say breathlessly. 

“They called it the Arundel tragedy after the uncle,” Ingrid said. The bag of food was now sitting forgotten in the hallway beside her. Her muscles were tensed beneath her plaid skirt, as though she was expecting to run somewhere. “Dimitri, Edelgard isn’t here. I know you must miss her, but she and all her siblings died as children.” 

“I need to go,” Dimitri suddenly said. He tried to push past them and into the hallway. Sylvain put a firm hand on his shoulder. “There’s something I have to check, please, let me go.” 

“Dimitri, we really care about you, but right now you’re...” Sylvain took a deep shaky breath. “You’re scaring me.” 

Dimitri took one look at them and then he bolted. He felt Sylvain’s hand tear a few threads in the shoulder of his sweater as Dimitri wrenched out of his grip. From behind him, he heard Ingrid’s cry of distress, but he had already taken off and he had the advantage of knowing where he was going. 

Outside, dusk had settled over the campus. Dimitri ran for the woods without looking back to see if anyone was chasing him. 

In the dim light, it was easier to pick his way through the trees and up the hill. The woods hid his progress and he hoped no one had followed him this far. His heart pounded in his chest in a way that had nothing to do with his run. 

In some ways, those words had been everything he’d been afraid of. That his mind was playing tricks on him. That nothing he saw or heard was real. That his friends were afraid of him because he was wrong somehow, deep down. 

But now that it had happened? He felt strangely free. 

All it had taken was the name: Arundel. Because even if he had dreamed a sister who had died years and years ago into existence, the name still meant something. The house was still real. The ghosts might be, in some sense, real. 

And given what he’d seen of real ghosts, how they acted, how they looked, how they spoke, it begged the question. When Edelgard had spoken to him, what the hell had he been speaking to? 

By the time he made it up the hill, it was almost full dark. The sky was covered by clouds and totally black. Dimitri felt the wind whipping at him, seeping through the rip in the shoulder of his sweater, but he did not falter. 

As the dark shape of Arundel house came into view, he took in the shuttered windows, the boarded up door, and the peeling paint. The hole in the roof yawned like a great black mouth and he thought he spotted shifting black wings inside. 

_ break it open.  _

_ pry up the boards. _

The whispers seemed to come from all around him. Dimitri obeyed. 

He ran to the well and with his fingers, gripped the partially rotten wooden plank then pulled. The wood splintered beneath his fingers as he tore it open, arms shaking slightly with the strain. He felt the sting of splinters breaking his skin and blood began to well up under his nails. He yanked again. 

The boards tore away, a rusty iron nail clattering to the ground. The well yawned below him, dark and impenetrable in the dim light. Even so, there was a smell. A foul smell beyond anything he could remembered floated up from deep within the earth. Dimitri felt his stomach clench and bile fill his mouth. 

As he stared down, however, he also noted that while the rope and bucket had long since rotted away, there were handholds carved into the stone of the well’s interior. Someone had meant for him to go down then. Perhaps the Seven Sages had cause to visit the depths of the earth from time to time. 

Dimitri took a deep breath of fresh air and then slung his legs over the side of the well. The stone was slick and slippery with lichen as he began to climb. It was lucky, perhaps, that he could not see the bottom. He lowered himself slowly and deliberately. With each inch that he descended further into the well, the smell grew worse. He gagged once and had to swallow a mouthful of acid. His fingers began to tremble from the climb, giving out faster than the strong muscles of his arms and legs. 

Then, abruptly, he felt his foot slip and he fell, hands clawing desperately at the walls for a hold. His feet hit water before he could find one, and he staggered back, reeling slightly from the drop as he splashed into a few feet of murky green water. 

It was pitch black at the bottom of the well. Dimitri could see nothing but the distant pale circle of faint starlight above him. He gasped into his sleeve a few times, using his elbow to block out some of the stench. 

“Please,” he whispered, “what do you need me to do?” 

The well was silent. He took a hesitant step forward and felt something crunch beneath his shoe. 

Then, all at once, a faint light filled the bottom of the well. It was a pale light, bluish-green in color. It emanated from a girl with curly hair, her face distorted, and yet somehow sad. Beside her was another young woman, her head lolling to the side on a broken neck. Monica, Dimitri realized. 

In the faint light, Dimitri looked down into the water and saw the bodies. 

The bottom of the well was a mess of bones. His foot was resting on a femur while other partially decomposed skeletons floated in the brackish liquid. At the top of the pile, there was a fresher body, the one that produced the odor. He didn’t look hard at it. It was a woman with dark red hair. He knew. 

_ take us home.  _

Dimitri felt tears prick at his eyes. His terror was fading and all he could feel now was just… sadness. Overwhelming grief at the lives that had been stolen here. 

“I will,” he swore. “I’ll find someone to get you home.” 

The ghosts flickered away into darkness. 

_ empty inside.  _

Dimitri spun around in the dark waters, searching for any more voices. 

“Hello?” 

There was no answer. 

Quickly, he began to climb back up out of the well. Going up was easier. He hauled himself up as fast as he dared, entirely focused on getting out and getting back to campus so that he could tell someone what he had found. 

As he clambered over the side of the well and into the grass, however, he noticed something. 

There was a light. A dim, flickering light, but it stood out in the darkness. 

Someone had lit a candle inside of Arundel house. 

Dimitri rolled to his feet, his shoes and the bottoms of his pants dripping with foul water. He took a step towards the woods. And then he took a step back, glanced at the boarded up door. 

It swung open with a low groaning creak. 

Felix had asked him recently why he always had to be the one to save people, even if it might destroy him in the process. 

The ugly truth of the matter was that Dimitri was unsure if there was much of him left to destroy. What harm could it do him to walk past that threshold? 

Dimitri swallowed very hard and then stepped through the door into the empty house. 

The inside of the house was dark and full of shifting sounds. Boards creaked beneath his feet and rats scurried into corners and the entire house seemed to groan as the wind whistled through chinks in the walls and roof. The ceiling was very high in the entryway and no one had ever removed the furnishings. Dirty bits of plaster dusted the mildewed carpet and a few crooked portraits still hung on the walls. 

The light was coming from the left-hand room, dimly flickering into the hall. Dimitri stepped cautiously inside and saw the ruins of what looked like an old-fashioned parlor. The whole place stank of decay and rot. The walls were papered and mold had eaten away at it in large, black patches. The furniture was faded and threadbare, much of the stuffing falling out where rats had nested

There was a fireplace filled with ashes in one corner and beside it a pair of built-in shelves still stocked with ruinous soggy books. Over the fireplace, instead of a mantel, Dimitri saw an enormous mirror. Parts of it were tarnished black, but some of it remained polished, reflecting the dim light of the candle and glinting in the periphery of Dimitri’s vision. 

On the sofa beside the fire sat Edelgard. 

Or rather, on the sofa beside the fire sat a thing that looked like Edelgard. 

She still wore her red coat, but Dimitri could tell that beneath it, parts of her body were beginning to look wrong. Her eyes had gone black and her skin seemed to be flaking away in patches, exposing more black beneath. 

“We meet again,” the thing that was not Edelgard said. She patted the sofa beside her and shifted the candle on the side table to put it between them. “Perhaps we ought to talk.”

“I know you aren’t Edelgard,” Dimitri said, taking a few steps forward despite himself. 

“I am Edelgard,” the thing said, “in a sense. I am her… husk. Yes, that sums it up well enough.” 

“Edelgard is dead,” Dimitri said, “you aren’t a spirit. I’ve seen spirits. You’re nothing like them.” 

“Edelgard is the last of a great line. Arundel was the last Thales the Seven Sages ever knew, but perhaps the greatest of them. It is a shame he ended his life in such ignoble condition, but his final acts did allow me to take on a temporary form in this world,” said the Husk. “I suppose you are still curious?” 

“I--” Dimitri began to deny it. But no. The Husk was correct. “I am.” 

“Sit then,” the Husk said, smiling with lips tightly closed. Dimitri wondered if the creature had teeth within or more of that impenetrable darkness that now shone from her eyes. 

Dimitri slowly lowered himself in the remains of a wooden chair. The patterned fabric of the seat was moth-eaten and discolored with damp and the legs creaked as they bore his weight. 

“What is it that you wish to know?” the Husk asked. 

“What am I?” Dimitri asked. The question was painful to speak. “Why can I do the things that I do?” 

“You and Edelgard were much alike. You bore powerful bloodlines that gave you certain predispositions towards talent. In ancient times, some might have called you oracles or priests and given you great honor. Now the world might simply call you mad,” the Husk said, an edge of faint resentment in her voice. “You hear the dead. See them, even. They can make their wishes known through you, even manifest their will through you. Through your abilities, you can give them justice when all others might have forgotten them. And possibly, with enough power, you might even bring them back.” 

“And what do you want with me?” Dimitri asked. He felt very cold. He wanted to turn his head and glance at the mirror, but he resisted the urge. 

“I want you,” the Husk began, leaning forward eagerly, “to do just that. Allow the dead to finish their business here. Become their… vessel.” 

“Like Edelgard is your vessel?” Dimitri asked bitterly. “Puppet, I think you mean.” 

“Edelgard is dead,” the Husk said, “when she was given to me, she was merely a shell. You can fight back. Use the power the dead will give you while maintaining your own will.” 

“And what about Monica?” Dimitri asked, his voice rising as he spoke. “What about all of those bones at the bottom of the well? What about  _ their _ will and  _ their _ justice?” 

The Husk smiled. A part of her mouth split at the seam and Dimitri caught a glimpse of inky blackness bursting through her cheek. 

“There is always a catch. But the price is fair. For every raising, blood must be spilled,” the Husk said. “If you test yourself, you might find a number of spirits wishing to have their chance at life again. If you are strong enough, you might resist some of them. Generations of my Sages have been waiting for me to fulfill my promise and let them rise again, but perhaps you will fight them back.” 

“You want me to try and fail,” Dimitri said darkly. “This is a trap and I refuse to play.” 

The house groaned again around them and the candle flickered. Shadows danced and raced up the walls, mingling with the dark mold stains into a tapestry of writhing shapes. 

“I am not interested in your failure,” the Husk said. “I am interested in your potential, Dimitri. All of these dead men, these so-called Sages, and only one could ever accomplish what I asked of him. If you prove yourself stronger, well, then perhaps we can work out an arrangement.” 

“You…” Dimitri trailed off. Things were beginning to come together in his mind even as his thoughts raced and spun. “You’re the Hegemon.” 

“I have answered to such a name,” the Husk agreed. Her skin had gone as white as her hair and the color seemed to be leaching away even as he watched. 

“And what do you want, then?” Dimitri asked. “What do you think I could do to help you?” 

“I want to live,” the Hegemon said and suddenly it was very close to him. Dimitri felt soft, horribly real fingers caress the side of his face. They were icy cold. “I want to live in your world and feel its warmth. I can give you so many beautiful gifts, Dimitri. Long life, power, a chance to right the wrongs of the world, even. All I ask is that you keep me close, let me in, let me stay a while longer here.” 

Dimitri stayed frozen in the chair, unable to move as the creature leaned closer. Her voice had become a moan of longing, a pathetic sound. 

“It’s so cold and lonely in Zahras,” the Hegemon murmured into his ear. “Let me stay here with you and help you.” 

“I don’t need help,” Dimitri managed to say, although it would have sounded tougher and more impressive if his voice hadn’t broken on the last word. 

The Hegemon’s grip on his face suddenly turned hard. He felt it force his head to the side until he was staring into the mirror of the fireplace. 

Surrounding him were hundreds of ghosts. Some of them pressed close, eager, almost predatory in their excitement. He recognized Monica and even the faces of some of the young men in the newspaper article about the Seven Sages. But there were others. His parents. His parents stood lingering in the door to the hall. 

“If you let me help you,” the Hegemon whispered, Edelgard’s honeyed voice pouring from a mouth that gaped wider with each word, “you can speak to them again. Keep them close to you. Help them be at peace. Your father has missed you so dearly, Dimitri, so dearly.” 

Dimitri saw tears beginning to spill down his cheeks as he stared into the mirror. He couldn’t hold them in. 

Why shouldn’t he be allowed to see his father and his step-mother? How was it fair that they were gone? If he had the ability, why shouldn’t he use it? He missed them. He missed them so much every single day. 

And who did he have left alive for him anyways? Ingrid and Sylvain thought he was crazy now. Dedue was at home, working and waiting and so far away. And Felix was… he’d already lost Felix. So who the hell did he have still among the living? 

“What,” Dimitri began, his voice shaking, “do I have to do?” 

“Swear your oath,” the Hegemon said, its grip on him gentle again. “And bind it with blood.” 

Dimitri nodded.    


“I’ll do it.” 

The Hegemon moved behind him and lifted him to his feet until he was facing the mirror. He faintly felt something squeeze his hand where blood was still smeared after prying up the boards. 

“Swear to me, by Agartha below and Thinis arisen,” the Hegemon hissed into his ear. “Swear to me you will shelter me. Swear that you will allow me to stay with you.” 

“By Agartha below and Thinis arisen,” Dimirti said, “I swear.” 

The ghosts in the mirror surged forward.

The sound of whispers cut out into total silence. And then the world was nothing but a scream. Dimitri seized his head as hundreds of thousands of voices began to roar in his ears. He felt hands all over him, dragging at his arms and legs, trying to move him, trying to force words out of his mouth. 

He jerked and spasmed, but his eyes remained fixed on the mirror. He watched his face move, taking on expressions of rage, of joy, of fear. He heard a wild laughter coming from his mouth. 

Behind him, the Hegemon Husk held his shoulders like a tender lover, stroking his hair as he shuddered and nearly dropped to the ground. 

_ please let us live let us come back it’s so cold it’s so cold down here please _

_ avenge us save us let us see our children let us kill our enemies let us return home _

_ give us her head give us a voice give us justice give us lovers and wine and joy and life again  _

Dimitri shook with the effort of staying conscious. He felt one of his hands reach out and numbly grab for the fire poker. There were people out there, bad people, that he had to take care of. 

It would be a worthy sacrifice. There was so much anger and sadness in the dead for so much left undone and he was the only person who could help and he had to help. They were all screaming, they were all screaming and terrified and desperately and he had to do something, he had to act, he had to… 

He…

They… 

They. All of them. 

They looked up into the mirror. There was a blonde young man looking back. Tall and athletic looking, well-dressed. It would do. Those hands seemed strong for the work that they intended. Know thyself, that was the wisdom. They wondered what this one’s name had been. 

Slowly, they smiled, enjoying the feeling of flesh upon their bones again and life pounding away in their chest. Before they could turn, however, before they could walk away, they saw something in the mirror behind them. 

A boy had come crashing through the door and sprinted into the room. In one hand he was holding an enormous, antique longsword. 

They looked at him and smiled, hoping that would be enough. 

“Dimitri!” the boy yelled, his voice broken and desperate. 

That must be the name of this one, they thought. 

“Yes?” they answered. 

“Dimitri, please,” the boy shouted. His voice was a wreck of stress and worry and exertion. “Please, come back. I-- I need you back.” 

They tilted the blond boy’s head and tightened their grip on the fire poker. If they could get the sword out of his hand, it would be quick enough to run him through and dump him in the well with the others and then…

They would… 

“Dimitri?” the boy with the sword hesitated. He faltered back a few steps. Afraid of him.

He was so tired of making Felix afraid of him. 

Dimitri wrenched his arm up and with all of the strength left in his body, smashed the fire poker against the mirror. 

There was an explosion of glass, a hundred thousand Dimitris shattering all over the room, each with a different face. He felt a sharp pain in his eye, felt something hot beginning to course down his cheek. 

“Go the fuck home,” he managed to pant and the roaring screams inside of him rose to a maddening pitch and then suddenly fell silent. 

He rolled to his side, broken glass crunching beneath him. He was lying on the floor looking up at Felix. 

The last thing he saw before he lost consciousness was Felix swinging the sword directly through the Hegemon Husk and Edelgard’s decaying body crumbling to powder around the blade with a wailing scream. 

\---

When he woke up, he first became aware of a sensation on his face. His skin felt hot around his right eye and there was something touching him. 

He blinked. One eye opened. 

The other… did not. 

Dimitri reached up, felt a thick pad of gauze on the right side of his face. He felt his breath catch as he tried to peel it back, trying to feel what remained. 

“Dimitri?” 

With his remaining eye, Dimitri managed to focus on the rest of the room. White walls. Afternoon sunlight. The faint blurry shadows of trees from the window. 

And Felix. Felix was sitting beside his bed. He looked pale in his black clothes and uncharacteristically worried. His hair was falling down over his face and his lips looked chapped and bitten. 

“Felix,” Dimitri whispered. 

Felix nodded with relief. 

“I wasn’t sure…” Felix cleared his throat. “I wasn’t sure it would be you in there.” 

“It’s me,” Dimitri promised. He felt a lump forming in his throat. “I think it’s me. Felix, I don’t know anymore, I don’t know anything--” 

“I believe you,” Felix cut him off. “Dimitri, I saw that… I saw Edelgard.” 

“Felix, I think I did something terrible,” Dimitri whimpered. “And if you hadn’t come, I think I could have done something even worse.” 

Felix reached out and grabbed his hand. His palms were rough and warm. Slowly, Felix reached up and brushed a few strands of hair out of his face. 

“I don’t care,” Felix finally said.

Dimitri felt a sob choke out of his mouth. One of his eyes felt hot with unshed tears and the other… didn’t. 

“What’s going to happen?” Dimitri finally asked. His mind felt foggy. Probably something to do with the IV he felt tugging at the skin on the back of his hand. 

“You’re uncle is flying in tomorrow,” Felix said grimly. “He’ll probably pull you out for the rest of the semester. And Dedue called. He said he needed to speak with you about something once you’re awake, something to do with a woman named Cornelia."

“What did you tell them about me?” Dimitri asked groggily, suddenly checking his arms to be certain he wasn’t cuffed to the bed. 

“When I found you, I didn’t… I didn’t know what to do. I just saw that thing that looked like Edelgard and so I swung with the Zoltan and…” Felix shrugged. “I doubt she’s gone forever. I told the police you’d found Monica’s body and gotten hurt trying to search the house. Sylvain and Ingrid know something is wrong, but I think I convinced them that it was some sort of weird migraine memory problem. Maybe you want to tell them. I don’t know.” 

“And you really do believe me?” Dimitri asked hesitantly. 

Felix’s face crumpled into an expression of misery. 

“I’ve always believed you,” he said quietly. “I just thought I could keep you out of danger. I thought if you weren’t running around looking for trouble and reading about ghosts, maybe the magic would just go away. But that was clearly fucking stupid because some sort of dead thing found you anyways. And I put you in danger.” 

“What do we do?” Dimitri said, exhaustion beginning to steal over him. “What do we do about all of this?” 

Felix sighed and then quickly rubbed a sleeve across his own face. The sight was so shocking it pulled Dimitri briefly from his sinking despair. 

“I don’t know,” Felix said roughly and then cleared his throat again. His voice sounded thick. “But this time, Dimitri, this time I will not leave you alone with this. I’ve been… I failed you before. I thought you were lying to me and I was confused and angry and… Dimitri, you were right. You were right and I should have helped you instead of treating you like a monster.” 

“You saved me,” Dimitri said wonderingly, memories beginning to rush back with greater clarity. “With a sword.” 

Felix cracked a watery smile at that. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I did.” 

“And Felix?” 

“Yeah?”

“I think I might have magical powers.” 

Felix actually made a gruff laugh at that. Dimitri felt the grip on his hand tighten a little. 

“Seems right,” Felix said. Dimitri felt his eye close for a moment. He was sinking again, back into sleep. 

“Dimitri, can I… ah, nevermind.” Felix’s voice cut through the fog for a moment. 

“What?” Dimitri asked. He felt so tired. His face hurt. 

“Wrong time to ask,” Felix said. “Just get some rest. We can talk later. Until then, I’ll be here.” 

“Tell me now,” Dimitri said. “I can’t… I can’t worry about any more secrets.” 

Felix flushed a deep red. 

“Can I kiss you again?” he asked. “Sometime, I mean. Not now, of course, when you’re in the hospital and everything is confusing and--” 

Dimitri pulled him forward by the hand and brought his head down until their lips could touch. Felix kissed him softer this time. Dimitri found that he liked that as well. 

When Felix finally pulled back he shook his head to clear his dazed smile away and then crossed his arms. 

“Right,” Felix said. “So. Anyways. When you’re ready we can talk more about everything. Seven Sages, ghosts, raising the dead, whatever you want. And if you think that Edelgard thing might come back, we will figure out something to handle it.” 

Dimitri smiled but no words came. He let himself sag back into the pillows. He was so tired, but some part of him felt safer than he had in years. He could handle ghosts and demons and death so long as he had Felix again. Together, he could handle any of it. 

“Will you stay while I sleep?” Dimitri murmured as his single remaining eye started to close against his will. 

“I’ll stay forever,” Felix said. Dimitri closed his eye. 

A moment later, when Felix probably thought he’d already dropped off to sleep, Dimitri heard him whisper a few more words. 

“I love you, Dimitri.” 

Dimitri smiled slightly as his chest filled with warmth. 

Outside of the window, a blackbird called faintly from far away. 

Dimitri felt his breath catch. 

Felix squeezed his hand a little tighter.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to imagine a spin-off of this where Dedue turns out to be a pro-demon hunter and the whole squad returns sophomore year for Buffy-esque supernatural adventures. @cyranonic on twitter for more coping through producing fan content.


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